Star Wars: Lost Souls
by BAPostma
Summary: Zeison Sha Warrior Foyi Imbuma has spent the majority of her life hiding her Force abilities on Yanibar, while training her sister, Tama, in secret. But when Tama is kidnapped by a sadistic serial killer, Foyi must venture across the galaxy, from the Smugglers' Moon to shadowy Point Nadir to the hostile jungles of Felucia, to rescue her sister. Cover Image courtesy of Wookieepedia.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 _A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..._

(Approximately one year before the Battle of Yavin...)

The wasteland stretched in every direction for kilometers without end, abutted by mountains thrusting themselves into the sky like the jagged, penetrative teeth of a sarlacc's maw. It was a field of white snow and patches of ice sparkling under the gray, overcast sky, an atmosphere of imposing cumulonimbi migrating across the stratosphere in a nomadic herd that loomed above those foolish beings who dared trek the wastes below. The relatively flat landscape was occasionally broken by deep, yawning gorges and hillocks topped by gnarled conifers, all dispersed by some mad twist of nature. The winds howled across the expanse, sculpting great dunes of snow and whipping miniature cyclones of ice particles into treacherous, meandering hazards that trekked the plains. The wind was only growing in intensity and fury, and the astute and those knowledgeable in the local weather patterns of this region of Yanibar would immediately spot the white haze on the horizon, the underskirts of the dark clouds even now moving inexorably across the sky. One of the legendary storms of the nigh-inhospitable planet was fast approaching, though the inevitability of this forthcoming event was lost on the pair of travelers racing across the white and gray fields.

They were astride 74-Z speeder bikes, clad in the white and black of Imperial Stormtrooper armor in an abbreviated design that maximized movement and flexibility at the expense of protection. Specialized packs on their backs were attached to the power supply of their speeder bikes, their vehicles providing them extra warmth in the subzero temperatures and unforgiving wind chill. The polarized goggles in their helmets filtered out the glare of the snow and prevented the loss of vision associated with the meager light's reflection upon the covering of ice particles as they sped across the plains, their bikes never more than a half meter or so above the ground. Strapped to their bikes were satchels with provisions and equipment commonly carried by the individuals enlisted in the Emperor's Scout Units, accompanied by the versatile and deadly accurate lengths of the E-11s Sniper Rifles each Scout Trooper carried and was proficient in the use of. Their speeder bikes made a high-pitched whine that was nearly drowned out by the rising ferocity of the wind as they flew across the dunes and drifts of snow, angling for a particular ridge, crowned in a grove of scraggly coniferous trees. They reached the slopes of the ridge within minutes of spotting it across the plains, and the whine of their bikes ground to a silent halt as they coasted to a stop.

The "Snow Scout" named Arj Relles leapt free of his bike after detaching the coupling protruding from his backpack and slinging his E-11s over his shoulder. His helmed head turned to regard his partner, Vo Sureeka, better known as "Pit" for his expert knowledge on mechanics and maintenance on almost any machine known to sentient beings, from speeder bikes to droids to refreshers. The nickname had been a derogatory monicker assigned him, referring to the DUM-series Pit Droid model, known for their wide usage in repairing pod racers, as well as their incessant antics and deplorable stupidity. The latter was also attributable to Vo, which was evidenced by the fact that he took pride in the nickname. "You sure you got some life readings out here, Pit? You're not still hung over from last night's round of jet juice, are you?"

Pit hefted his blaster rifle and trudged forward through the snow, approaching the meager canopy of the grove while he spoke through his helmet's comm channel. "Alright, Arjie, I'll admit, I'm still kind of groggy...I mean, when Lieutenant Kella makes jet juice, you gotta hit that stuff 'cause it will put you under the table every time. Every. Time."

"You're going to get a court martial, you keep that up," Arj replied snidely. "And don't call me Arjie...no one gets to call me Arjie, not even my grandmother."

"Oh, I see how it is. You and the boys can call me 'Pit' all you like, but when I try to make up nicknames for you guys, you get all sensitive."

"Yeah, 'cause all your nicknames are stupid, 'cause you're an idiot. Now, where did you spot these lifesigns?"

"It showed up as a blip on my readouts," Pit grumbled, pointing ahead, up the slope and into the thickest portion of the trees. The wind was monstrously powerful now, evidenced by the pronounced bend in the trunks and branches of the trees before them. "I figured anyone crazy enough to be out this far in the murglin' wilderness on a day like today must be looking for a place to hide. And anyone who wants to hide from us is probably rebel scum...or one of them Zeison Sha we keep hearing about."

Arj blew an exasperated breath and he proceeded up the hill, the snow sucking at his boots and making it decidedly more difficult to ascend. "You know, I keep wondering where we drew the short straw to get trapped on this hellhole. Blistering hot summers with heat storms and dust cyclones, and winters where the snow never stops coming, and the ice falling from the skies could punch a hole in a gundark's skin. And all to find these mysterious 'Zeison Sha' warriors, supposedly dangerous allies of the extinct Jedi and rebel sympathizers." He slipped on a patch of ice, but regained his balance before he collapsed completely. "But this dirtball is full of colonists and nerfherders too stupid to get offworld and too stubborn to give up their worthless territory to the Empire without a fight. Yeah, there's rebels and malcontents here, but so far, I haven't seen any evidence of Jedi sympathizers and fanatical Force cultists. Why we're wasting our time here is beyond me. I'd rather see some real action, like at Sulon or Taris. But out here, you can't even get any decent news from the HoloNet...I'm not even sure if we won at Taris or not..."

Pit shuffled forward, pausing a moment to glance at the horizon, which was becoming far more indistinct as the impending, cataclysmic storm approached quickly. "Hey, about that storm..."

"Why couldn't we be assigned someplace fun, like Spira or Nar Shaddaa? I could really use a real Fogblaster, and a busty Twi'lek on my lap..."

Pit stopped and nudged his partner with the butt of his rifle, and being none too gentle about it either. "Hey! If you're done moaning, you might want to take a look over there...another one of those blasted storms is coming, and I for one don't want to be caught out in another one."

Arj paused to regard the storm, and found himself taken aback at the sheer wall of snow and dark clouds racing toward them. What had been a barely-imperceptible haze on the farthest edge of the horizon only minutes before was now a catastrophic tumble of white, gray, and black howling with all the force and size of a Star Destroyer crashing from orbit. "Sithspit! Forget the life readings...we can check on them later. Get back to the bikes...we need to get the hell back to base!"

Pit needed no further encouragement as he turned immediately and began to slide back down the icy slope so quickly he slammed into his hovering speeder bike hard enough to make the vehicle jump. He looked back up to see if his squadmate had witnessed his bumbling, but Arj was absorbed in retreating back down the slope more carefully, avoiding patches of ice and clumps of wet snow. Pit was about to make a wisecrack regarding the speed of his partner and his age, when he caught a glint of metal and rapid movement as some sort of narrow, spinning object flew out of the trees, curved in midair, and passed through Arj's throat. The Snow Scout did not even make a sound as his helmed head was separated from his shoulders in a spray of blood that arced across the snow. Arj's body collapsed in the snow and tumbled down the slope as the object that killed him whipped back into the tree cover. Pit yelled an unintelligible noise of denial and surprise as he shouldered his rifle, but the unknown object was already whizzing through the snow-laden branches, almost too fast for him to see. He took a wild shot at it, trying to knock it out of the air, but it merely spiraled above his head and curved back down like a hawkbat descending on its prey. Pit did not even register any pain as the object spun through his throat, tearing through his skin, larynx, muscles, and jugular, nicking the vertebrae in his neck and spilling his lifeblood all across the snow. Pit was coughing his last breaths in an eruption of blood within his helmet before he collapsed across the saddle of his bike, but the unevenly distributed weight of his body sank his remains to the snow.

The whirling, bladed object spun around as if it had a mind of its own and whipped back up the slope to the waiting hand of its owner, even as the being bursting from the trees sprinted down the hillock to the abandoned speeder bikes. The object had been a discblade, an archaic and esoteric weapon consisting of a circular handle set within a circle of metal containing four razor-sharp blades curving back on themselves. The cool, shiny surface of the blades were now smeared with bright red blood, but its owner did not seem to care as she stashed the weapon in a specialized holster she kept on her back. She was a Twi'lek, a Rutian with pale, minty skin, large emerald eyes, and a narrow face with pert lips and a skinny nose. A scar ran from her left eye and slightly along her left lek, known as the _tchun_ in Ryl. She dressed herself in a heavy, fur-lined coat, her lekku shoved in her hood to keep them warm as she sprinted down the slope, somehow keeping her footing on the treacherous surface, despite the near-impossibility of such a feat. Over her shoulder was slung the slain carcass of a durni, as well as a small satchel containing unknown objects. She leapt over the body of the Snow Scout known as Pit, and landed with the saddle between her thighs, activating the vehicle, spinning it around, and fully opening its throttle. She was nearly dislodged by the air resistance that hit her squarely in the face at the 74-Z's incredible speed, and the bike shot across the plains, leaving the hillock, corpses, and abandoned second bike behind as she aimed for the unseen collection of structures and prefab housing kilometers ahead.

The world flew past her in a gray, black, and white blur, but she barely paid attention to what was ahead, instead casting her gaze over her shoulder to the forces of nature bearing down upon her. It was one of Yanibar's legendary blizzards, speeding to catch up with her, the winds making her bike difficult to control as they buffeted the 74-Z's steering vanes. The Twi'lek ripped the handlebars side to side to compensate, snow beginning to fly around her, obscuring her vision. But the way home was instinctual; her knowledge of these lands was ingrained within her mind and body, having grown up here, lived here, learned to survive every measure of cruelty and harsh indifference nature on Yanibar could throw at her.

The storm was nearly upon her when the first shadows of the village she called home came into view on the horizon, rising out of the fields of ice like the last bastions of solidarity in the galaxy. She willed the bike to move faster, but its throttle was already fully open, and its engine was shrieking in the harsh winds attempting to wrest control of it from her. The buildings grew in size and shape, their contours becoming definite, their arrangements familiar. She knew where to look for her dwelling well before she saw it, and despite the bone-numbing chill of the wind on her face and ferocity of the storm swirling around her, she could not help a grin pulling at the corners of her mouth.

She closed the throttle and slammed on the brakes as her house came into view, a low-lying rectangular structure, built in the stark, stoic, and traditional style of the Yanibar colonists, its stone walls thick, its windows able to be barred by heavy metal shutters. The 74-Z screeched to a halt, but she was already leaping off the bike even before it had fully stopped and powered down, and she sprinted through the sliding door to her house and slammed the heavy metal barrier closed behind her. The wind shrieked and screamed and pummeled at the door, but even Yanibar's storms could not pass through solid durasteel. She was safe, safe to wait out the blizzard's fury at her own leisure.

She pushed the hood off her face and took a heady, steadying breath in the chilly air. Her dwelling consisted of a main room that functioned as both living area and kitchen, with piles of dishes and pans in the sinks, a rough-hewn wooden table and chairs, and some ratty old rugs spread across the floor. A low doorway on the far side of the room led to a refresher and two small bedrooms which held little more than cots covered in sheets and furs, electronics manufactured before the Clone Wars, and small knickknacks she had collected over the years. The embers of a dying fire glowed in the alcove that served as a fireplace and a means for heating meat and stew, and the Twi'lek crossed the intervening floorspace quickly in order to rekindle the flames and absorb the heat they cast. She pulled the heavy leather gloves from her lithe hands and rubbed her fingers together rapidly to work the feeling back into the digits. She heard movement from the hallway, and turned to see her sister, a Rutian Twi'lek girl of only fourteen, her skin an aqua tone, with a somewhat stockier build than her older sister, but still in relatively good shape and health. Her face was also more rounded, her eyes smaller and almond-shaped, her lips and nose having greater prominence, her looks having favored their father. She was dressed in woolen and cotton robes belted by a sash, with slits cut along the legs and arms to allow a full range of movement. When she saw that her older sister was home, she beamed and ran forward for a crushing embrace that was difficult to extricate oneself from.

"Foyim'buma!" her sister exclaimed. "You beat the storm!"

Foyim'buma, also known as "Foyi" to the few people she counted as close friends and family, smiled and dropped the durni carcass on the table so that she could return the hug. Her sister, Tamam'buma, better known as simply "Tama" let her go after a moment and stepped back to inspect the durni. "Wow! We're actually going to have fresh meat tonight?"

Foyi nodded, shrugging out of the harness that held her discblade and the heavy coat that protected her from the elements. She was dressed in similar robes to her sister, though they were tighter -fitting and covered a pair of pants and tunic. "Hunting was actually successful tonight, thank the Force. I figured you were as sick of scrounging up cases of nutrient paste and ration bars as I am."

"Damn straight I am! I'll skin it and start up a delicious stew."

Foyi glared down at her. "Where'd you learn to talk like that? Have you been slumming around the spaceport again?"

Tama gave her a perturbed look. "I wasn't 'slumming'...I was getting to know some very nice spacers and spice runners. You know how much I love to hear their stories about the galaxy beyond the Outer Rim...beyond this nowhere dirtball."

Foyi made a face as her _lekku_ twitched irritably. "You know they're probably just feeding you a bunch of bantha poodoo because they have an audience. And in my experience, spacers and spice runners are anything but 'nice'. How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of the cantinas?"

Now it was Tama's _lekku_ that were twitching as she peeled bloody meat away from the durni's skeleton. "As many times as you want, because it should be obvious to you by now that I'm not going to listen. If you interacted with people more often, you'd realize they're not all bucketheads and nerfherders out to take advantage of you. There are decent people, even amongst the scoundrels of the galaxy. And they've seen and experienced _so much_! What's wrong with trying to learn more about our galaxy?"

Foyi crossed her arms indignantly, her _tchin_ wrapping about her throat in an annoyed gesture. "Nothing, Tamam'buma...but you have to realize that the galaxy is a big place...full of good and wonderful things, but also evil things, like the remnants of the Jedi, the Empire. The Empire may be here as well, but the stormtroopers we have to contend with on Yanibar are nothing compared to the power of the Empire in the rest of the galaxy. And being Zeison Sha, we do not want to attract undue attention...few beings in this galaxy actually pay attention to Yanibar, and it should stay that way."

Tama, who was in the midst of crafting the stew, slammed her fist on the table. "Don't you _hear_ yourself right now?! You talk like the Emperor himself is going to stomp on Yanibar because I'm asking a few harmless questions of the local spacers! The Empire wouldn't even give a _kriff_ for this fraggin' hunk of rock if it weren't for the rumors of the Zeison Sha! It's nothing I did, and none of my actions are going to bring them down upon our heads!"

"You know who else thought that way? Ma and Da, right before the Empire found out about them!"

Tama went completely still, refusing to look at her sister, glaring into the raw contents of the pot before her. "You're not the only one who thinks about Ma and Da everyday, you know. You're not the only one who loved them."

Foyi bit her tongue before another angry retort escaped her lips. She mentally kicked herself; her previous response had been insensitive, unnecessarily harsh, and disrespectful of the memory of their parents. Tama had a point. Foyi had been so caught up in her own selfish concerns and emotions regarding the Empire and the murder of their parents that she often did not consider that Tama had been old enough to remember their parents and form a meaningful relationship with them. The Twi'lek stepped forward and enfolded her angry sister in an embrace, pulling her head to her chest. "I'm sorry, Tamam'buma. You're right, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of curiosity, as long as you're careful. You're the only thing I have left in this galaxy, and I don't want to lose you too." She put her sister at arms' length so that she could lock gazes with her. "Just promise me that you'll be careful. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Tama managed a brief smile as she pulled away and went back to preparing the stew. "You know I always am, Foyim'buma. I know which spacers are safe to talk to and which ones are real murglaks. And the Imps never pay attention to me anyway; to them, I'm just some dumb kid wishing to see the stars up close."

"Well, they're not wrong about that" Foyi replied in an attempt at levity.

Tama gave her a playful, retaliatory slap to the shoulder. The rest of the preparations for the meal were carried out in relative silence. Foyi offered to help her sister with the meal, but one of Tama's favorite activities was cooking, and rarely allowed her sister to assist her, citing her assertion that Foyi would somehow "kark it up". Foyi wanted to speak with her sister about the filthy mouth she was developing, no doubt the direct influence of spending so much time at the spaceport, but she decided chastising her sister once was enough for the day, so Foyi momentarily retreated to her bedroom. It was a simple, spartan arrangement, containing a cot stolen from a crashed freighter on the edge of the spaceport, woven furs and blankets strewn across its less-than-comfortable mattress. Unused power sockets decorated the corner, and an unlit candle was the only source of illumination in the room. An old weapons locker pulled from the carcass of the same starship as the cot functioned as her closet and lockbox for her sparse wardrobe and personal belongings too valuable to carry on her person. Upon entering the room, she crossed to the locker and tapped the code into the door control to open the locker; when it did not respond immediately, she pounded her fist against the door, and the locker rattled as it popped open. The dark, musty space held a few tunics, pairs of pants, and fraying robes. Propped against the far corner was a dusty E-11 Blaster Rifle she had "procured" from a stormtrooper years ago, and had not touched it since. Beside some pouches and meager piles of credits was a suit of armor, made of portions of metal plating and thick cloth forming a sort of hip cape and robe about the more rigid parts of the armor. The metal was a dark gray in color, its previous silvery sheen dulled by dust and years of disuse, while the naturally dark green of the robes appeared almost black in the shadows of the locker. Cultural symbols and motifs were carved into the breastplate, characters and representations from the earliest memories of the Yanibar colonists, so old she was not even certain of the original intent or meaning of the symbols, despite having carved them herself. She reached out a hand to the breastplate and rested her fingers on the cool metal, feeling the spiritual connection she held with the garment. She knew every scratch, miniscule fracture, and dent in the metal, every frayed thread and tiny space between fibers of the cloth robe. It was imperfect, as all things in nature were, but it was an imperfection she was familiar with, one born of her own physical characteristics; to don it would feel like wrapping herself in a second skin. The armor was the defense and shield of a Zeison Sha Warrior, crafted by her own hands from painstakingly-acquired materials, imbued and attuned to fit her physical form like a glove, the defense the garment offered like an unconscious extension of her own defensive maneuvers. She pulled her hand back wistfully, and silently cursed the Empire. She had not worn the masterpiece created by her own hands in many years, for it was a physical affirmation of her membership with the Zeison Sha. When she was younger, the Zeison Sha Warriors had walked proudly through the streets of their colony and trekked bravely through the wilderness, their armor and robes on full display, discblades in their hands, protecting the innocent from criminals, lowlifes, and predators. But then the Empire came, looking to take out their vengeance on the Zeison Sha for the rebellion of the Jedi at the end of the Clone Wars. Those Zeison Sha too proud or too unaware to become nondescript, to hide their signature armor and weapon, became immediate targets and were gunned down in the streets or dragged away from Yanibar in Imperial prisoner transports, never to be seen again. The lofty, wondrous Temple of the Zeison Sha, the Sha Kalan, became the fortress from whence the Imperial troops launched their search parties, a place of learning and enlightenment transformed into a bastion of fear and tyranny overnight. The last few years had been better for the citizens of Yanibar; the spacers whispered of the Rebellion Against the Empire, of Imperial defeats at Kashyyk and Kamino, far-flung worlds she knew nothing about. Fewer and fewer stormtroopers walked the streets or patrolled the wilderness as more and more Imperial forces were reassigned to other beleaguered outposts. Many of the Imperials still on Yanibar were uncertain that the Zeison Sha existed, or ever existed on this world of ravenous predators and fantastically dangerous weather patterns. They had become less willing to venture from the relative safety of their base and the spaceport, which had emboldened those Zeison Sha still in hiding, regaining a modicum of their former roles within the community and only occasionally tangling with Imperial forces; those that did left no stormtroopers alive to tell the tale, or died fighting. It was Yanibar's own tiny rebellion, one that was gaining more of a foothold against the Empire as the officers and stormtroopers assigned to the planet were so few already, they were forced to pick and choose their battles carefully.

For her part, Foyi had attempted to stand up to the stormtroopers when she could, protecting herself, her sister, and their neighbors when they were harassed by Imperials. So far, she had done little to attract retribution against herself and the ones she protected, but she was hesitant to fight too openly. She was aware that the life she had crafted for herself and her sister stood upon the razor's edge of disaster; one wrong move could lay her low on the ground, bleeding on the street or the wild's cold stones. Or the Empire could suddenly return in force, locking the entire planet behind a blockade and searching door to door for their enemies, dragging people to interrogation chambers just for looking sidelong at a stormtrooper, TIE Fighters screaming overhead. She could not let Tama experience life like that. And if such an eventuality were to come to pass, she would make certain it was not due to any careless action she had taken.

Foyi stepped back from the locker and exhaled to steady herself, momentarily focusing her mental energies inward to find the calm center at her being. She slammed the locker door closed, then returned to the main room of their small house, where the strong smell of durni stew wafted through the space. Tama was stooped over the fire, where the stew sat bubbling and steaming, the younger Twi'lek slowly stirring the viscous liquid with a ladle. She glanced at her sister, and the slight curling of Tama's _lekku_ from around her throat told Foyi that her sister seemed to be in a better mood. Foyi got the impression that she had been forgiven, which she took relief in. She walked closer, sniffed deeply of the gamey aroma sizzling from the pot, and nodded appreciatively. "It smells wonderful, Tamam'buma."

Tama nodded, a smile alighting her features. "Well, the durni you brought was a little skinny, but I threw in some tubers to thicken the stew...I just wish I had some spice to bring out more of the flavor..." She glanced up at Foyi, who regarded her inquisitively, then rolled her eyes. "Not _that_ spice...you know, spices! Condiments! Whatever!"

Foyi gave a slight chuckle. "I know, I'm just teasing you." She crossed to the sink, extracted some relatively clean bowls and utensils, and began to arrange them on the table. She jumped a little as a particularly powerful wind gust slammed against one of the metal shutters, sounding a loud, metallic clang through the house. Tama gave the stew a last stir, brought the ladle to her lips, and sampled the broth. She shrugged, then brought the pot to the table, carefully ladling out decent portions for both of them before replacing the pot on the rack above the crackling fire, where the remaining stew would keep warm. The two of them sat on either end of the table, and without further ado, began devouring the durni stew like individuals who had been living off bland nutrient supplements for weeks. Which they had. Little was said for a few moments, as both of their mouths were too full of hot stew to speak properly or politely, though Foyi managed to waggle her _lekku_ a bit to communicate her pleasure and gratitude.

They were both on their second helpings when Tama finally broke the silence. "Did I hear a speeder when you got home, or was that my imagination?"

Foyi smacked a hand against her forehead; the stolen speeder bike was still sitting outside, and she had completely forgotten about it. "Yeah...I killed two snow scouts who were tracking me while I was hunting, and used one of their bikes to beat the storm here. I'll slag it somewhere in the wilds when the blizzard's over...the Imps don't come out in these storms, so it should be safe outside for now."

Tama glanced worriedly at the door. "Assuming the winds don't smash the bike into our house."

"Assuming that."

Tama returned to finishing her second helping, but Foyi was not ready to let the conversation drop yet, so she opened a new topic for discussion. "Have you been practicing what I taught you recently, Tamam'buma?"

Tama made a face and returned to spooning up the last of her stew. "Kind of...it's just...I'm not very good at it..."

"And you'll never get better if you don't practice," Foyi replied. "Finish your soup, and then you're going to show me what you can do."

Tama grimaced again, but nodded. The two of them finished off the rest of the stew, unsure when Foyi would be able to track down more wild game, so they ate their fill. After clearing off the dishes and making a lackluster attempt to clean the pot, Foyi drew one of the rugs on the floor to the center, providing a cushioned spot for the upcoming training session. Tama took her usual place at one end of the rug and sat cross-legged, immediately settling into a relaxed, loose state, beginning the lesson with a few meditative breathing exercises, as she always did. Foyi settled into a similar position facing her sister, then stretched out her hand over her shoulder in the direction of the table. She opened herself past her physical form and limitations, calling upon the weapon that still sat in its specialized harness on the tabletop. She could feel the discblade in her hand, knew every contour of the handle and the blade, felt every ridge in the leather wrapping, the wickedly sharp honed edges of its blades. And suddenly, the discblade was in her hand, seemingly leaping free of its holster to her hand, spinning like a dervish of death through the air before settling in her palm. It felt no different physically than how she had imagined it; her discblade was attuned to her, and her to it. It was the ranged extension of her limbs, of her will. It was like a metaphysical link, a chain that bound her wrist to the handle of the discblade, never truly separated, and she need only give a slight tug on that chain to close whatever distance existed between her and the weapon.

Foyi brought her hand and the weapon it handled before her eyes, then opened her hand, the discblade floating free as Foyi submerged herself in the Force. To her, the Force was like a vast sea of cool, calm waters suffusing the entire universe around her. All beings walked its surface; those who could not feel the Force never saw the sea, or the endless waters, and being blind to this, assumed they walked on solid ground. But she could see it clearly; being sensitive to the Force, it was impossible for her not to see the truth. She felt the ripples and waves created by the passage of other, splashing about her feet. But when she opened herself to the Force, accepted the waves, she let herself sink below the surface, where the waters were warm, the currents powerful, her lungs breathing more deeply and more clearly than she ever could in the open air on a sunny day in the unadulterated wilds of Yanibar. She opened her eyes, and felt a profound peace, a serenity born of the realization that here, touching the Force, letting it flow through her veins like blood, the galaxy made sense. She knew how she fit in the great puzzle of existence, how she was supposed to be here, at this moment. There was a deep connection between herself, her sister, the floor, the discblade, the insatiable howling of the wind outside, the remains of the durni slowly digesting in her stomach and intestines. The Force was life. The Force was unity.

Foyi plunged herself into the Force as the discblade began to spin, first horizontally, then vertically, then diagonally, moving so fast that it appeared to be a sphere of blurred movement and flashing metal. The spinning ball of movement began to drift back and forth before them, then bouncing up and down, until the movement of the revolving discblade seemed completely random. Foyi's eyes were not focused on it, however; she was in tune with the Force now, and the Force supplied her with the concentration she needed. Her telekinetic powers were familiar and well-practiced to her, the hallmark of a Zeison Sha Warrior, master of thrown weapons, master of the discblade. As the whirling weapon began to spin slow orbits around the two Twi'leks, Foyi intoned softly, "Do you have the stone?"

Tama reached into her pocket and withdrew an oblong stone, its surface smooth from constant, anxious rubbing of one's palms. She showed Foyi the stone, sitting still on her open palm, and Foyi smiled. "Good. Now...make the stone go through the open center of the discblade, without touching the metal, or the handle, or being deflected off by its spin."

Tama pursed her lips, then closed her eyes again, grimacing as she fought for a deep connection to the Force. She stretched out her hand, and the stone slowly levitated off her palm, floating in midair. Tama's brow furrowed in greater concentration as the stone began to move, tracking the motions of the spinning discblade. Foyi, immersed in the Force, found she could focus on so many events and stimuli at once, mostly because these stimuli came to her of their own accord, like separate currents and waves rippling and splashing at the perimeters of her ever-expanding consciousness. She could see and feel Tama in the Force, a bright, warm presence, one comforting in its familiarity and proximity. As her younger sister stretched out with her mind and her feelings, her presence grew brighter and larger, creating cozy ripples and dancing waves that splashed against Foyi's consciousness. The stone hovered closer, and began following the spinning, weaving, bobbing discblade about, keeping time with it. Foyi smiled as the stone approached her discblade, but she could see the sweat beading on Tama's forehead beginning to trickle down her face in the strain of concentration. The waves she was sending out were becoming colder and more infrequent as Tama pushed herself harder, letting out a slight gasp of effort. Foyi breathed in mild frustration, but kept her voice calm. "Tama, maintain your focus, but don't force it. Let the Force _flow_...remember, _you_ don't want the stone to fly through the hoop...the _stone_ wants to...you exist merely to help it. Feel the connection between you, the stone, the discblade, me, and the event about to happen and just _let_ _it_."

If Tama even heard her, she did not register it, and the current she was producing only became more sporadic and violent as Tama strained more and with a sudden application of the Force, the stone leapt forward at the discblade...and was immediately deflected,. The stone flew away, but Tama caught it again telekinetically and whipped it back at the discblade. There was another loud _clang_ , and the stone shot to the ceiling before bouncing back to the floor. Tama let out a heaving gasp as her eyes flew open; she had given up on moving the stone, much less throwing it through the middle of the whirling weapon. She put her face in her hands, and Foyi, disappointed, stop the discblade's spin abruptly and let it sink gently to the carpet.

Tama breathed heavily, obviously exhausted by the mental effort and her continued failure at this particular exercise. "I'm sorry...I just _can't_ do it, Foyim'buma. It's _impossible_! This is the...tenth time I've tried this, but I just can't do it."

Foyi leaned forward, frustrated with her sister's constant self-doubt, but she kept her voice serene. "Tamam'buma, it's not impossible-"

Tama's frustration boiled over, leading to a vicious retort. "Yeah, that's what you keep saying, but I've never seen _you_ do it! Can you even do half the stuff you try to teach me? I wish Ma and Da were still here...they were always better Zeison Sha than you."

Still submerged in the Force, Foyi felt Tama's anger, frustration, and grief hit her like a full-frontal wave of cold water straight to the face. Her sister's words stung, but they had no true venom in them. Tama was merely frustrated with the lesson, and her training overall. Before the Empire, Tama would have been sent everyday to the Sha Kalan, to work with the Zeison Sha Masters in utilization and awareness of the Force, in the ways of the Zeison Sha warrior and the discblade, learning from people far more qualified and experienced than Foyi. Foyi, for her part, had actually gained some training from both her parents, as well as the Masters at the Zeison Sha Temple, but her tutelage had been cut short by the arrival of the Empire. Foyi, like so many Zeison Sha existing these days, had had to finish her training on her own, mostly through trial and error and the wisdom of others in hiding, practicing in secret or as far from prying eyes as possible. Despite these setbacks, Foyi had managed to excel in the ways of the Zeison Sha, especially telekinesis and wielding a discblade, the hallmark of the Zeison Sha order and tradition. But Tama held a more tenuous connection with the Force, no less strong than her older sister's, but with differing focus. Telekinesis did not come easily to her, and she regularly felt frustration and saw failure in almost every way she called on the Force due to her personal insecurities. Tama's naturally inquisitive and forward-thinking nature was getting in her way, preventing her from experiencing the present, the "here and now", and more often than not, she took her anger out on Foyi, her sister and her teacher. Foyi was certain that Tama did not mean the disparaging and derogatory remarks she sometimes levered the older Twi'lek's way, because ultimately, she believed that Tama recognized her own insecurities and issues as her own barriers to greater understanding and mastery of the Force.

But she was still a fourteen-year-old girl, and so rarely took responsibility for anything.

Foyi sighed again, then let herself sink beneath the cool, calming waves of the Force again. The discblade jumped into the air and began its bouncing, whirling circuit around them. The Twi'lek raised her right hand, and the stone floated off the floor, revolving around the discblade, following it. Foyi sent a current at the stone, and it began to pass through the middle of the whirling mass of wrapped leather and metal blades, moving perfectly in and out of the space in the handle almost a dozen times before Foyi let both sink back to the floor. She let out a heavy exhalation, then opened her eyes to see Tama staring at the two objects on the rug, completely aghast, her mouth slack-jawed. She met Foyi's dispassionate gaze and asked, "How? You made it look...so simple."

"In some ways, it truly is...that's what I've been trying to teach you, Tamam'buma. Remember when I told you that the stone wants to pass through the middle of the discblade, and in the exercise, you exist to help and facilitate it, not force it, not control it. Remember: you are not the beginning and end-all of the Force. The Force is in all things, created and nurtured by all living beings but with an energy, a will even, all its own. When you call upon the Force, you must feel its currents, its flow, and allow it to fill you, to move through you, to become part of it. When you impose your will on the Force, you will find yourself having unnecessary difficulty. But when you become part of the Force, when you let your emotions, your preconceptions, _yourself_ go and simply acknowledge your kinship with the rest of the galaxy and the Force itself, then you will find your task easy."

Tama glared reproachfully down at the stone and the discblade. "You make it sound so easy."

'Because it's not as hard as you make it out to be. You're hampering yourself by approaching the exercise with your pent-up frustration and your anger. Use the meditative lessons I taught you; purge yourself of both negative and positive emotions. Allow yourself to become an empty vessel, a sponge for the Force."

"I'm sorry," Tama replied.

"It's fine, Tama...I know you're frustrated, and I know you're angry. Anger, rage, wrath are useful emotions as well, especially in the heat of battle, as long as they are controlled and used wisely. You must never let yourself be dominated by any one emotion...that's a slippery slope that leads to the Dark Side."

Tama leaned forward, her interest clear on her face. "You said once that you've seen the Dark Side, but you never really talk about it..."

Foyi nodded, her mind returning to unseen memories she had not viewed in years, memories that still made her shudder. "When I was very small, much younger than you are now, I took some of my lessons at the Sha Kalan, before the Empire came and claimed it as their base. There was a Master there, a Rodian with a cheery disposition but a mean streak when students or other Zeison Sha would anger him. Most of us Initiates liked him a lot because he was funny, intelligent, and had a way with everyone learning the Zeison Sha ways; he had a gift for recognizing exactly how he needed to change his teaching style to accommodate the learning habits of each and every student. But you never wanted to get on his bad side, because he could be genuinely scary.

"But everything changed for him, and for us, when he found out his family had been slaughtered by voorcats on a hunting trip. Everyone who lives here knows that life is hard on Yanibar, and these events do occur...family members, loved ones...sometimes they die to the claws of predators or the horrible storms we have. This...Master realized this, understood this like everyone else, but when his family died...he could not handle all the pain and grief he was experiencing, and he became angry until he was consumed by his wrath. He went out into the wilds for weeks, hunting and killing every single voorcat he found. Many in the community gave him up for dead, but when he came back, he was a complete stranger to all who knew him. The Force was raw, wild, and powerful within him, but he was so dark and cold...he returned to the Sha Kalan, to regain his teaching position, but no one would go near him. His presence was like a cold blast of water in the Force. The other Masters tried to help him, but he was too far gone, and lashed out at them. I wasn't present for what happened after that, but I heard Ma and Da talking about it in whispers some nights, and they said that he attacked some of the Masters and the students, and actually killed one of the other Masters before they killed him. It was...horrible."

"But...why do some people who can feel the Force turn to the Dark Side? Is it more powerful?"

Foyi shook her head. "I don't know if it's truly stronger...if it is, it comes at far too high of a price: the sacrifice of oneself. To fall to the Dark Side is to lose oneself completely to one's own base emotions and passions, to be ruled by emotion rather than being in control of oneself. To use the Dark Side is to impose your will on the Force, instead of allowing it to flow through you and be a part of you. Those who have fallen to the Dark Side try to command and control the Force in a vain attempt to gain more power, but the Force does not answer to any one person. Remember that you are part of a living, breathing system...if you are truly one with the Force, you won't ever feel the need to cross over to the Dark Side."

Tama sighed, but her stare never left the two objects on the rug. "I'll try and remember that. It's...just so hard..."

Foyi stood, smiling. "You know Tama, don't blame yourself for not getting the hang of this exercise. In all honesty, it probably took me hundreds of tries to get this right, and you're a lot closer to completing it after only ten practices than I was at that stage. Keep practicing, keep feeling the Force, maintain your focus, and you'll get the hang of it."

Hearing that her sister had had the same issues she was experiencing with the exercise seemed to motivate Tama, and they practiced it over and over until the middle of the night, where Foyi decided to call it a night for both of them. Tama had never actually gotten the stone through the center of the whirling discblade, but she came close enough to grant her some measure of encouragement. The storm howled and screamed at their door and windows throughout the entire night, and the walls creaked in the ferocity of the tempest, but inside the home, it was safe and cozy. Tama, more than a little disappointed in herself, but not as disheartened as she had been, went to bed exhausted, and Foyi could hear her light snores only moments after her younger sister disappeared into her room. But Foyi was too restless to sleep for the moment. Yes, her time spent attempting to train Tama had been tiring, but she found sleep elusive tonight. She kept thinking of the pair of snow scouts she had killed on the hillock in the wilds. The Imperial garrison would undoubtedly take issue with two of their number being absent without leave, and may even organize some sort of search party to track them down. If the blizzard had not been bearing down upon her, she would have disposed of the bodies properly, perhaps even mangling the corpses to make it appear that voorcats or some other predator had killed the scout troopers. She was not worried about the other Imperials discovering the bodies tonight; the Empire's minions knew not to venture out into Yanibar's horrendous storms, and by morning the corpses would probably be buried in snow and ice. There was still the issue of the stolen speeder bike parked outside, an issue that would have to be remedied as soon as the tempest abated, which could subside as quickly as it could arise. Which meant she needed to be ready to move at a moment's notice, so true, deep sleep was not an option. The excitement of battle and the sudden onset of the storm had made her reckless, and if she was being honest with herself, had put her and Tama's relatively safe and quiet existence in jeopardy. The lack of sleep would be her penance for her recklessness. She reminded herself that she was a true Warrior of the Zeison Sha. She should be far above such simple and careless mistakes.

Foyi sank back to the rug in a cross-legged position once more and closed her eyes, imagining the cool, bright waters of the Force. It was a simple thing to slip in between the waves, into the bright currents and relaxing breaths, as if the universe was breathing for her. Her breathing slowed, her heartbeat relaxed, and she felt disconnected from the rest of the world, the house, her own body. The only thing she consciously registered was the undulating shriek of the wind, the minute pitter-patter of snowflakes, the tiny metallic pings of ice splashing against the durasteel shutters. She submerged herself in a spiritual trance that would purge her of anxiety and negativity, that would rejuvenate her weakened muscles and sore limbs. She became one with the Force, and drifted on the currents of energy, of life, of unity.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Foyi emerged from her hibernating trance the instant the winds ceased howling and became a steady but slowly-calming presence. She stood slowly, testing her limbs and joints for rigidity and soreness, but she was pleased to find none; her Force trance had been complete, as regenerative as it was invigorating. She felt well-rested, even though she had not slept at all during the night. She checked her chrono and found it was the early hours of the morning. Assuming the sky was not completely shrouded by clouds, the sun would be visible over the mountain peaks in only an hour or so. Foyi padded across the cold floor on bare feet and cracked the door open a few centimeters, peering out at the world blanketed in white beyond. The walls of the neighboring houses were streaked with ice and pockmarked by the scars of loose debris being driven into their sides by the uncaring winds. A few decimeters of snow covered the village's cobblestone streets, and knife-edged drifts had been sculpted by the wind, some of the drifts so high they engulfed the lower-roofed homes, while others were iced over or even frozen solid. She glanced beside the door and found the 74-Z Speeder Bike still hovering beside their home, though it was much closer to the wall than she had originally parked it. A thin sheen of ice covered most of its surface, and a drift had even formed against it. The wind was no longer as egregiously angry and vicious, but the cold it carried on its zephyrs slashed through her skin and chilled her bones.

Foyi ducked back in the house and set about bundling up for the day. Her stomach growled, desiring a morning meal, and she placated it temporarily by wolfing down a nutrient bar. She pulled on a coat, robes, a scarf, and drew the hood over her head, tucking her _lekku_ inside its voluminous folds. She stopped by the door to her sister's bedroom and opened it a few centimeters, checking on the sleeping form of Tama, swaddled in the heavy furs and blankets of her cot. Foyi reached out to her in the Force and found that she was still fast asleep, dreaming soundly and pleasantly. Foyi smiled, then slipped the door closed and exited the house into the blood-chilling winds. She drew the scarf over the lower portion of her face, strapped on a pair of goggles, then hopped aboard the bike, momentarily readjusting her position as her posterior slid across the ice on the seat. She keyed in the startup sequence, and the 74-Z coughed and sputtered for an agonizing moment. Then, with a stutter and a roar, the speeder bike bellowed to life, and Foyi allowed herself a chuckle. She opened the throttle and wheeled away from the house, racing down a short stretch of street before flying out into the open again.

The wind was bitterly cold against the exposed parts of her face and the thin lining of her gloves. She could feel the hot moisture of her breath beginning to freeze into patches of ice on her scarf, and what air reached her throat was rough and raw on its lining. The speeder bike protested the speed and the ice that had formed in its inner workings, and her passage across the wide open plains was marked by a streaming cloud of disturbed snow. The dunes of snow and ice that had existed the day before on the plains were like mountains in miniature, towering in graceful, sharp-edged shapes, their slanting peaks curling in on themselves, white wraiths of snow blowing off their tops.

It did not take her long to reach the copse of trees and small ridge where she had killed the pair of snow scouts the day before, though the landscape surrounding the area was so changed, she almost flew right past it before she recognized it. The speeder bike was whining much louder than usual by this time, and it practically screamed as she wheeled it around. She parked the vehicle at the base of the hill and closed its throttle, but left it running. Most of the trees had been leveled by the storm, half-buried in snow, their stripped branches thick with ice; she could even see the remnants of a trunk almost a dozen meters away, where the tree had been ripped from its roots and carried bodily through the air before being deposited. The remaining bike had been ruined, obliterated by a fallen tree and crushed under the weight of choking ice. The bodies were nowhere to be found. Foyi found this disconcerting, but not necessarily unexpected. The corpses could have been buried by the snow, frozen solid hunks of flesh and armor until the blazing heat of summer thawed them. Or they could have been blown away by the wind, like some of the trees had been. Or predators could have drug them off to their dens for food; voorcats were known for not being particular about whether their prey was alive or dead before they consumed them.

Foyi spent almost an hour trudging through the snow, searching for any signs of the bodies she had left, digging up potential areas of concealment with a small trowel she had brought in her pack. Her digits were completely numb by the time she decided to give up the search, still mentally cursing herself and the storm for preventing her from disposing of the evidence of her kills. She had acted like an Initiate yesterday, and there was still a decent chance that her idiocy would result in reprehensible consequences for herself...and, more importantly, Tama. She returned to the ruined bike, then set about her task of burying its remains in snow. Her chilled limbs began to gain warmth as her arms pumped, stabbing the blade of the trowel into snow drifts swept nearly solid by the incessant wind, but the cold of winter would not be denied. Before she was satisfied with the task, she was shaking from cold, despite the hard labor and the heavy garments, for as she sweat, the moisture would freeze within her clothing, dropping her body temperature. After some leveling and patting down with her utensil, guided by the Force, the buried 74-Z bike appeared to be just another drift in a horizon-spanning plain of them, and the winds would make certain that it stayed buried as long as the snow and cold of winter persisted. She looked to the other speeder bike, the one still functioning and hovering nearby, despite how much it whined in the cold; of course the Imperials had not properly adapted their vehicles to winter conditions, trusting in the "infallibility" and "superiority" of Imperial engineering. She found herself indecisive as to its fate. She really should get rid of it, buried here alongside the one she had just interred or fly it a considerable distance from this area and crash it into something unyielding. But her extremities were already so numb they felt like cold, durasteel weights hanging off her limbs and the back of her skull. And crashing the 74-Z meant trudging through the snow that was waist-high at certain points, facing winds that could reach gale-force speeds, while contending with the distinct possibility of another blizzard similar to the one the night before appearing seemingly out of nowhere. And the journey from here back to her home was well over twenty kilometers, which would require a difficult overland journey where she could simply die of exposure.

Foyi blew out a shaky breath as she made her decision. She did not like it, but for now, she needed the stolen 74-Z. It was not ideal in the slightest, but she would keep the speeder bike for survival, for she could not return to her home, to the sister that relied on her, safely without it. This would necessitate her hiding the vehicle for an extended period of time, but she believed she could take this risk. She knew of several abandoned shacks and a disused warehouse on the outskirts of the village that would serve as excellent and anonymous hiding spots, as many villagers, and even some Zeison Sha, used them for concealing all manner of contraband from the Empire. And if stormtroopers were to find the location in which she stashed the bike, it would be difficult for them to discern exactly who was responsible for the theft and subsequent deaths of the snow scouts.

Foyi stepped in her previous footprints, not bothering to hide them, for a few minutes of the high-speed winds would erase any evidence of her being here. She straddled the speeder bike, opened the throttle, and the bike shrieked as she wheeled it around and zipped across the plains. She glanced up at the sky, her teeth chattering in the insufferable winds, and watched worriedly as gray and black clouds skidded across the gray atmosphere. Slight fractures in their feathery coverage admitted the cold light of the sun, leaving random shafts of gray light filtering through the air and kissing the ground. The wasteland was beautiful in its own right, and she could not deny the thrill she felt within her chest at the speed with which she was passing everything, from rising mountains that seemed to touch the clouds, to scraggly trees, to the voorcat slinking through the snow almost a half-kilometer to the east. She could not physically see it, but she could feel its carnivorous intent through the Force. The Force was alive, and just as breathtaking as the feeling of the speeder roaring beneath her, of the wind whipping through her clothes, tugging on the sensitive flesh of her _lekku_. Despite the cold she felt, the wind that ripped her breath from a raw and ragged throat, she realized there were far too few instances where she felt truly alive, truly a part and player in the great holovid known as Existence. Here and now was one of those moments, and she could not stop herself from letting out a long, pealing ululation as she zoomed past the outskirts of the village.

Foyi slowed the vehicle as a collection of rundown houses and dilapidated shacks came into view. She pulled the throttle closed and let the 74-Z coast toward one of those shacks, a rectangular establishment of prefab housing, much of the roof caved in. There were parts of other vehicles and frozen pieces of machinery scattered in dejected piles, having become an impromptu dumping ground for residents and visitors alike who cared not where they discarded their broken datapads and droids. Most of the metallic scrap was frozen to their places in the ground, but Foyi found some old, tattered cloaks and tarps and parked the 74-Z in the shack. She draped the tarps over the vehicle, then used the Force to rip several pieces of machinery and metal scrap free of their frozen positions, then heaped them all about the speeder bike. When she was done, the tarps was arranged so that it looked to be just another scrap of cloth whipping about in the wind, trapped by the weight of all the metallic trash heaped atop it. It would take some concerted and knowledgeable digging to discover the speeder bike, and as long as she kept it hidden and did not use it unless absolutely necessary, the bike could most likely remain out of sight until the spring. Only then would she be forced to dispose of the bike...or perhaps the Imperials would have given up the search for their lost equipment and personnel by that time. Maybe she could keep the bike for use by herself and Tama by hiding or removing the laser cannon and rearranging the steering vanes to make the vehicle appear to be a 74-Y Speeder Bike, the civilian version of the 74-Z. If she could make it look like a civilian bike, it would be even more difficult for the Imperials to pin the theft of the bike and the death of the snow scouts on her.

She emerged from the shack almost an hour after she had arrived. The meager sunlight was far brighter than before, the infrequent streams of light filtering through the thick clouds brilliantly gold in hue. The temperature had rose only a few degrees, though it was enough to make her feel as if she were having less trouble breathing in the frigid air. She readjusted the half-frozen scarf about her throat and chin, pulled her hood down somewhat, and trekked through the deep drifts lurking throughout the streets. Foyi passed the occasional passerby, most of them residents, the descendants of the original colonists of Yanibar, hardy, resourceful, resentful people who ventured out in the inclement winter because they had to. No one, not residents, not visitors, ever got used to Yanibar's weather.

Foyi turned the corner of an old convenience store and began striding along the street hers and Tama's home was located. She looked up from watching her footing and froze. About ten meters down the street, their backs to her, were a squad of snowtroopers, moving in an orderly fashion, systematically checking the doors of each house they came across. There were nine of them in total, dressed in the winterized armor, hip capes, and heating packs indicative of Cold Assault Stormtrooper units. The squad had split into two groups, four stormtroopers approaching each house on either side of the street, while the squad leader stood in the center of the street, questioning passerby and residents who had been pulled from their homes into the blistering cold. Her eyes gazed past their armored forms, and determined that at this rate, they would reach her home in only a few minutes. She was figuratively frozen in place for a long, agonizing moment as she attempted to decide what she should do, how she should act, while berating herself for causing this mess. She just _knew_ the stormtroopers were here because of her actions yesterday; the Imperials never sent an entire squad down this street, and they almost never went door to door administering impromptu interrogations.

Foyi forced herself to act, to end her indecision. The survival of herself, her sister, their lifestyle, may very well depend on what she did in the next handful of minutes, and she would not be useful simply standing here. She turned to the left, sticking to that side of the street as she kept her gaze low, willing herself to appear small, insignificant, unimportant. Her goal, a thin alley branching off from the street, was ahead; if she could slip into its confines, it would link with another cramped alleyway through which she could sneak into the back entrance of her home and remain invisible to the street. The Twi'lek had just reached the corner of the intersection when a voice rang out over a helmet speaker, a voice calling, "You! Wormhead! Halt!"

Foyi did not need the Force to tell her that the squad leader was speaking directly to her. She turned slowly, facing the squad leader, who still stood in the middle of the street, only now his blaster was pointed in her direction. The other snowtroopers in the street were now turning toward her as well, and their blasters were not _quite_ leveled at her, but they imposed a silent threat nonetheless. Foyi momentarily considered reaching for her discblade, but it was still secured in the holster on her back, beneath her heavy coat. Extracting it, even through the Force, would require too much time and effort, and most likely invite a blaster bolt to the head before she could use the weapon with any effectiveness. The Twi'lek attempted an innocent facade, raising her hands and replying through chattering teeth, "Me, sir?"

"You see other wormheads on this street?" the squad leader demanded, his question completely rhetorical. "Come over here. Now."

Foyi walked slowly over to stand in front of the squad leader, the other snowtroopers moving closer, their weapons raised. Foyi cast a nervous glance at the gathered Imperials, then addressed the snowtrooper before her. "Can I help you..." She glanced at the snowtrooper's rank insignia. "Can I help you, Sergeant?"

"Let me see your face," the sergeant responded. Foyi reluctantly complied, removing her hood, unwinding her scarf, and pushing the goggles atop her head. The cold immediately felt like a razor scraping off the uppermost layer of her epidermis, but she gritted her teeth and bore it, managing to maintain what she hoped was an innocent, clueless expression. The sergeant's expression was completely unknown to her; stormtrooper helmets were not particularly revealing. "What is your name, wormhead?"

"Foyi Imbuma," Foyi responded, using the split form of her Twi'lek name, which was a more common naming convention outside traditional Twi'lek culture.

The stormtrooper sergeant stared at her for a long, uncomfortable moment. Foyi attempted to not shift about on her feet nervously, keeping her eyes cast downward in a subservient expression, knowing better than to stare too long into the soulless lenses of the snowtrooper's helmet. Most likely, the pause was due to the man conferring with superiors through his helmet's comlink. When he spoke again, Foyi was not expecting it, and nearly jumped at the sound of his grating, digitized voice. "You live on this street?"

Still recovering from her surprise, Foyi automatically answered, "Yes", and instantly regretted it. She was having difficulty not betraying her emotions and inner turmoils on her face. True, black fear was coiling and squirming in her stomach, gnawing at a knot in her lower abdomen. Even calling upon the Force did little to truly calm her emotions as visions of herself and Tama trapped in an Imperial cell or interrogation chamber swam before her eyes. She was keenly aware of the snowtroopers having formed a semicircle around her, the unspoken threats hovering at the barrels of their E-11s.

"We've had reports of unlicensed speeder craft in this area. Specifically, the civilian use of a 74-Z speeder bike, which is authorized for use by Imperial personnel only. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that would you, wormhead?"

Someone had heard her driving around with the bike, maybe even seen her, and like good little Imperial citizens, had reported the strange occurrences to the authorities. At this point, they could only have suspicions that the speeder bike and the missing snow scout patrol were related, but under Imperial rule, one could be interrogated, tried, and executed on suspicion alone. Considering the way the squad was focused on her and her alone, it was likely the snowtroopers suspected her already, so it would not do to give them a bold-faced lie. She might be able to talk her way out of this if she gave a modicum of the truth, or used some sort of misdirection or diversionary tactic. She feigned an expression of deep recall and consideration, before answering in a quivering voice that was not entirely artificial, "I...I did hear something last night...something that sounded like a speeder driving past my house...I'm not really a mechanic or a speeder jockey, so I don't know what kind of vehicle it was, but I suppose it _could_ have been a bike..."

As she spoke, she extended her Force awareness, tasting the emotions of the snowtroopers arranged around her. She felt anticipation, excitement, aggressiveness, even mild fear. But all she sensed from the sergeant was incredulity; he did not believe her story, though she had the sense that he based this conclusion more on instinct than any actual evidence of her falsehood. "Why don't you show us where you live, and we'll see if we can't identify the type of speeder you heard." While he phrased it like a suggestion, the two snowtroopers who came up beside her, each gripping an arm, made it clear that it was anything but. Walled in by armored bodies and blasters, Foyi was marched down the street as she used a pointing index finger to lead the way to her house. She began to submerge herself in the Force, calling upon its power to keep her calm, serene, and prepared for any opportunity that presented itself. As her house came into view, she drew the Force about her and extended herself through it, her mind riding a single, directed current that carried past the snowtroopers and into the house ahead, searching about for Tama's presence. A warning, a scream of fear, a one-word command to _run_ rode the wave's crest, but the current did not find its intended destination. Unless Tama was somehow hiding herself from the Force, a skill well beyond her meager level of training, she was not present. She was nowhere to be found in the house. Foyi allowed herself an audible sigh of relief. For once, she found herself rejoicing in Tama's stubbornness and her unwillingness to listen to her older sister. If she was not in the house, she was most likely at the spaceport again, listening to the wild tales of spacers, spice runners, and smugglers, and so that was where Foyi would start to look for her. But first, she had to somehow extricate herself from the clutches of these snowtroopers, then pack up whatever they could and leave. She knew several places they could hide on Yanibar, including Zeison Sha safehouses where they would be welcome and protected. It would not be as private or as independent as living in a home all their own, but it would be lightyears better than spending time on an Imperial prison barge.

They approached the house, and Foyi was relieved to see that the wind had removed any obvious evidence that the 74-Z had been present outside the door. One of the snowtroopers wasted no time in kicking the door open, and four of them poured in, their weapons sweeping the interior. The sergeant grabbed Foyi's arm and hauled her inside as well, in time for her to see one of the snowtroopers kicking the table and furniture over, shattering dishes from the night before. Another took a look at the fireplace and the glowing embers within, while the other two crept into the hallway, examining the refresher and the bedrooms. She did not hear any cries of surprise or discovery, and silently thanked Tama for her obstinacy. One of the snowtroopers emerged from Foyi's room and said, "Sergeant, sir, we found a locker in here. Has a code on it."

The sergeant roughly propelled Foyi forward, his grip like icy durasteel on her arm, and pushed her through the doorway. The blankets and meager mattress of her cot had been upended and spilled across the floor, while there were multiple new dents in the locker's door, as if the snowtrooper had tried to bash it open with his E-11 before remembering they had a prisoner who could open it. _Stupid bucketheads_. The sergeant let go of her arm and nudged her toward the locker with his blaster, his voice cold and deadly. "What've you got in there, wormhead?"

"J-just some clothes. It's my wardrobe...there's nothing interesting in there." _Except a stolen Imperial blaster_. A small, desperate plan began to form in the base of her brain, and her _lekku_ twitched excitedly. She fell further within the cool waters of the Force, but they had become more tumultuous as she began to summon a heated tide of anger, feeling the vibrations humming just beneath her skin as she internalized it, crystallized it. It was time for action. She was a Zeison Sha Warrior, more than a match for a stormtrooper squad. She would strike quickly, cleanly, and true. Assuming the stolen blaster she had not touched in years still held some sort of charge.

"Open it," came the sergeant's expected command. Foyi crouched down before the locker, making certain her body obscured the lower contents of the container as she input the code. Her entire body was practically buzzing with caged anticipation and raw Force energy. Her senses were sharp and crystal clear. She was one with the room and all its contents. She knew exactly where the blaster was before the door ever opened. She could feel the presence of the snowtroopers in the house, their positions, the sound of their breaths. There were two in the tiny room beside the sergeant, which would limit their maneuverability and fighting prowess. However, she would be similarly confined, but surprise was on her side. If she did this right.

The door popped open with a tinny squeal, and she slowly stood, still blocking most of the snowtroopers' view of the locker's interior. The sergeant began to speak, commanding, "Alright, no sudden movements. Back away slowly..."

Foyi began to comply, then reached out in the Force at the same time she spun around. The stolen E-11 leapt free of the locker's confines and slapped into her waiting palms, so that as she faced the sergeant and the pair of snowtroopers, she was suddenly armed. The sergeant gave a cry of surprise, but Foyi squeezed the trigger, discharging a laser blast into his sternum. The armor's control panel burst in a shower of sparks, smoke, and flame, and the sergeant gave an anguished cry as he was blown backward into one of his subordinates, knocking him over. The only snowtrooper in the room still standing fired at her torso, but she had already rolled to the side, and the blast went wide. She came up to one knee on her ruined mattress and fired from the shoulder, the laser piercing the man's helmet and blowing most of his head away, leaving a greasy splatter of blood and brain matter across the bedroom's wall. The snowtrooper trapped beneath his commanding officer's corpse extricated himself from beneath the body, but his weapon became momentarily trapped in the corpse's armpit, which gave Foyi plenty of time to shoot him in the lower abdomen. The snowtrooper gave a strangled cry and fell atop the sergeant's body, rolling over in pain, screaming through the helmet's vocabulator. She attempted to fire another shot to finish him off, but there was a fizzling, electronic noise, and she realized that the blaster's power pack was bereft of charge, depleted by years of disuse and the sudden, current violence.

Foyi could sense the snowtroopers approaching the doorway before they arrived, and as the first snowtrooper leveled his blaster through the opening, she hurled her empty weapon directly into his faceplate with a Force-propelled throw. His aim was thrown off, and his shot stuttered into the ceiling, blowing white-hot shards of stone about the room. Foyi surged forward, rolling through the doorway, refusing to have her mobility compromised by the confines of her bedroom. As she came rolling across the floor, she whipped off her coat, so that when she came to her feet, she whirled the heavy garment around the head of the disoriented snowtrooper, the cloth obscuring his vision. She gripped his arm, spun him around, then caught him in a headlock, propping his body before her just as the rest of the squad began to enter the house, firing. The snowtrooper in her arms, the coat still wrapped around her head, struggled, but she managed to move him to intercept the blaster bolts meant for her. She felt his body spasm in her arms as multiple lasers struck his torso, and with a shuddering breath, he went limp. Foyi let the body fall as she leapt over the corpse in a Force-enhanced jump forward, landing a flying punch into the faceplate of the lead snowtrooper, letting her anger and fear for Tama's safety provide unnatural power to the blow. The snowtrooper's helmet cracked in a jagged fracture right down the center, and the unfortunate soldier was blasted to the ground by the ferocity of the blow. But barely had she touched the floor with the toes of her boots and she was spinning away, tucking into a roll to avoid the concentrated fire of two more snowtroopers, the lurid heat of their laser blasts singing her skin and robes. She stopped her roll behind the overturned table, and blasterfire thundered into the opposite side, as well as the wall behind her, sparks, splinters, and stone shrapnel exploding all around her. The old wood of the table would not withstand the withering assault leveled against it for long, but Foyi did not need much time.

Her left hand snaked over her shoulder as a laser blast punched through the table and scathed the skin between the right side of her throat and her clavicle, burning away a small portion of her hood in the process. She extracted her discblade from its holster even as she hissed in pain; the laser burn was not life threatening, but it was bad, and it stung mightily. Another laser sliced through the table, which had caught fire at this point, but it exploded harmlessly at her feet. Her cover about to be blown to pieces, Foyi allowed herself to experience the pain of the burn, allowed it fuel her simmering rage, and sharpening all of it to a razor point. She leapt from cover, the Force washing all around her, carrying her on a tidal wave of energy. Everything seemed to occur in slow motion, giving her plenty of time to observe her enemies, their positions, whether they stood or crouched, whether they fired from the hip or the shoulder, and how far they were spaced from one another. There were three in the main room with her, close to the door, spaced relatively evenly from each other, while the last two members of the squad were outside, invisible to her vantage point and shining like beacons in the Force. The three in the room discharged their blasters simultaneously, but she found herself with all the time in the world to react, twisting her body midair to let the lasers pass above and below her, sometimes with only centimeters to spare. But the Force was her ally, her strength, and she trusted it completely to warn her, to keep her safe, to guide her weapon and her actions. The discblade left her hand, feeling more like she had let it fly of its own accord rather than applying any physical force to throw it. Even as she was arcing toward the end of her leap, gravity drawing her to the floor, the discblade spun and whirled in a horizontal arc of its own. Its whirling edges caught the snowtrooper farthest to the left in the throat and tore it open in a spray of blood, shockingly scarlet on his white armor. But the weapon, guided by her mind, by the Force, did not slow, would not be diverted, and passed through the throat of the snowtrooper to his right. The snowtrooper farthest to the right attempted to duck the discblade, but it merely curved downward, following his changing height to bury itself in his chest, parting his breastplate as if were not even present. By the time Foyi's dive from cover carried her to the floor and she rolled back to her feet, the three snowtroopers were dead, collapsing to the floor, gasping their last breaths as blood spurted from their mortal wounds. She stretched out her right hand, gasping at the pain that the motion needled her burn with, and the discblade ripped itself free of the snowtrooper's armor and soared into her hand.

But she was still not done, even though her chest was heaving and her muscles were shuddering from exertion, pain, and fear. She was just reaching her feet again when the final pair of snowtroopers leaned in through the doorway, firing their blaster rifles at her, using full autofire and filling the room with smoke, flame, and screaming lasers. Foyi zigzagged back in forth, and her left hand shot forward, her mind calling on the Force, imagining the nearest snowtrooper in melee range before her. The Force swirled like a tide retreating from a beach, and the snowtrooper was suddenly thrown bodily through the doorway and into the main room, shrieking in surprise as he soared through the air to land directly in front of the Twi'lek Zeison Sha. A lightning-fast blur of her wrist opened his throat, and as he collapsed, Foyi's free hand wrested away the blaster still clutched in his spasming fingers. The final snowtrooper continued to fire, but only one of his shots came close to Foyi, and it was intercepted by the collapsing form of his comrade. Foyi enhanced her speed with the Force as she dodged to the side, raising the E-11 and depressing the trigger. Still set to autofire, a scarlet storm of light erupted from the blaster's barrel, stitching craters in the wall beside the doorway, whizzing through the doorway into the snow-flung winds, and catching the snowtrooper's barely-exposed shoulder. He staggered into view, reaching for his wounded shoulder, and he took three laser blasts to the chest, and collapsed in the snow, his rifle firing a single, reflexive shot into the air. Then silence reigned once more in the house, save for the hungry crackle of flames consuming the table and guttering out in the many craters in the walls, floor and furniture of the main room. The silence was pierced by an agonized whimper coming from her bedroom, and Foyi rushed back into the room to see the snowtrooper she had shot in the gut crawling across the floor, mewling in pain and fear. She got there in time to hear the last few words of a message he spoke into his helmet's comlink. "...need reinforcements...Zeison Sha..."

Foyi fired the blaster before she realized it, silencing the fallen soldier forever. She felt her legs quivering, and involuntarily she collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath, weariness settling into every fiber of her being. As a Zeison Sha Warrior, she had trained for combat, but never had such a battle so threatened her life or tested her Force abilities to the breaking point. The burn on her neck felt like it was ablaze, the flames slowly spreading through her blood and producing an agonizing heat over much of her upper body. She knew it was not a mortal wound, that she would survive it, that a healing trance would take care of most of it, as well as a bacta patch if she could acquire one. But she had neither the time nor the luxury for such things. The snowtrooper had gotten a message to his superiors. Even if they had been willing to overlook the disappearance of a snow scout patrol in the dangerous wilderness of Yanibar, there would be swift and total retribution for the slaughter of an entire squad in an urban area. She had to get her sister and herself to shelter and safety as soon as possible; perhaps even offworld, though she was loathe to leave. Even now, there could be TIE Fighters, AT-STs, perhaps the Jedi Hunters of the Inquisitorius mobilizing to bear down upon this house with powerful, vengeful fury. She had put herself, her sister, and the entire Zeison Sha community in danger by unnecessarily attracting the attention of the Empire, perhaps all the way up the chain to Imperial Center itself.

Foyi forced herself to stand from her exhausted position on her hands and knees, snagging one of the torn blankets from her ruined cot to use to wipe her discblade free of blood, then replaced it in her holster. She then retrieved a satchel and began stuffing extra clothes and personal items in the bag, pausing when she got to her armor. She momentarily considered leaving it behind due to its weight and conspicuous nature, but she could not bear to part with it. It was a part of her, of her heritage, and the Empire had already taken so much of that from her. She would not allow them to take this.

Hurriedly, her burn screaming in protest, Foyi removed her outer layers of clothes and strapped her armor to her frame, feeling the comforting weight of the suit and robes, how the armor adhered to and moved with her form and her actions. She had the distinct feeling of being whole, as if she had been missing a vital portion of her being for a long time and was finally reunited with it. She retrieved her outer robes and belted them over the suit of armor, mostly obscuring its contours and bulk. She then withdrew a length of rope from the locker, picked up one of the snowtrooper's E-11s, checked the charge, and tied the rope to the barrel and the grip, so that she could sling the rifle over her back. Finally, she reacquired her coat, which was still wrapped around the dead snowtrooper's head and pulled it on, then shouldered her satchel, and with a heavy sigh, jogged from her room and through the main doorway into the icy streets beyond. She cast a glance into the sky, expecting dozens of TIE Fighters silhouetted against the cloudy atmosphere, but she saw nothing of the sort, neither did she hear the characteristic scream of the Imperial starfighters' ion engines. She noticed with mild interest that there was no one on the street, all the passerby having vacated the area in response to the ferocious firefight that had occurred. Which most likely meant that if the Imperial base had not received the dying snowtrooper's call for reinforcements, they were probably receiving a flood of messages from scared and distraught civilians. _Spast!_

Foyi set off at a jog, wheezing at the exhaustion still gripping her and the weight of her armor and the objects she was carrying. She angled herself toward the spaceport on the opposite end of town, and prayed that Tama would be safe until she got to her.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Tama awoke from her deep slumber slowly and groggily, finding it difficult to extricate herself from the thick furs and blankets wrapped about her like a cocoon. She slumped out of her uncomfortable cot and dressed quickly, shivering in the cold air. The fire must have died again; or perhaps it was simply not enough to ward off the brutal cold of Yanibar's oppressive winter. She padded into the main room of their small house that was one of the few things she and her sister possessed that had belonged to their parents. The fire was little more than ash and embers, but with a little prodding and a few thin slivers of wood, it began effusing warmth into the room once more. After a bland breakfast of nutrient supplements, she did a quick inspection of the house, but she found no other beings present. Foyi must have left early to deal with the speeder bike, and Tama could not help but feel a small amount of disappointment. She had been hoping to take the 74-Z for a spin, even though doing so would be dangerous and potentially suicidal. The disappointment only reminded her of her frustration and anger the night before stemming from her continuing failure in the discblade lesson her sister had presented her. Tama felt shame at the memory. She generally considered herself to have a rather affable personality at most times, but she had always felt a certain level of rivalry and irritation with her sister. She did not know if it was due to Foyi's more aggressive and introverted personality, or if it simply originated from the fact that they were sisters, thus necessitating a genetic or environmental predisposition to conflict based on their close relation to one another. This compounded her reactions to her difficulties with her Force training, and inevitably led to her building anger.

But she felt ashamed because she had been neither kind nor fair with Foyi. Her limitations in feeling and interacting with the Force were hers and hers alone, and to cast blame on others was merely an excuse that prevented her from addressing her problems and overcoming them. If she continued in the attitude she had been cultivating when faced with a new test of her Force abilities, she would never become a Zeison Sha Warrior...and she badly wanted to rise above the ranks of Initiate.

Tama finished her breakfast of protein and self-reproach and returned to her room, where she retrieved the smooth stone from the night before and a cold metal hoop almost fifteen centimeters in diameter. She did not possess a discblade herself; Zeison Sha Initiates who were knighted as Warriors built their own discblades as a rite of passage, an eventuality she hoped to meet at some point. Foyi had left her the metal hoop to allow her to practice the test she had so many difficulties in passing, though Tama often found the practice routine even more taxing than the actual test, as she had to levitate and telekinetically manipulate both objects herself. When Tama had addressed this fact to Foyi and asserted that attempting practice in such a manner was "cheating", Foyi had flippantly replied, "If you can do the practice successfully, the actual test will be a slice of _patogga_." So far, Tama had been unable to move the stone through the spinning hoop, or keep the hoop spinning while also moving the stone through the air. Granted, she had only practiced a handful of times, even though Foyi expected her to be studying, practicing, and becoming familiar with the Force techniques of the Zeison Sha every day. Especially the telekinetic powers, which were the focus and pride of the entire Zeison Sha tradition. And as was her lot in life, using the Force for telekinesis required far more effort and exertion on her part than it should have. Most Force-sensitives raised by Zeison Sha parents were juggling their toys midair and lifting their parents off the ground by the age of three. But for Tama, telekinesis had always come to her with only vigorous education and great mental strain. Foyi had also been puzzled by Tama's apparent learning "block", though she had never explicitly said as much, and had encouraged Tama to "submerge" herself in the Force before she ever tried to manipulate it, to let it "flow" through her. Tama had noticed that Foyi often used aqueous analogies when describing the Force, but this only served to continually confuse the younger Twi'lek. When she felt truly connected to the Force, she experienced it more as an overwhelming but comforting stimulation of all her senses at once. She would hear soft, calming music in her ears, smell a sweet aroma that reminded her of the sweesonberry rolls her mother used to make, the feeling of a comforting caress on her skin, the taste of refreshing liquid on her tongue, and bright auras of light around all objects she could see, bleeding into each other in a scintillating morass of sensation. The Force was not water to her, or anything closely resembling it. It gave her sensation and information to attract, enhance, and stimulate all of her senses to varying degrees. Using the Force to push an object further away from her resulted in a tactile sensation on her palm, the texture of the object as real to her at a distance as it would be if she were to physically touch it. Sensing her sister in the Force, even at great distances, was like hearing Foyi whisper encouragement in her ear, or the sound of her laughter at an unknown joke. And her rising anger was a growing thunder in her ears and a bitter taste in her mouth, like blood trickling down the back of her throat.

Tama put aside her musings and steeled herself, settling down on the carpet and placing the hoop and stone before her. She stilled her breathing and let her bodily processes slow, everything from her thudding heart to the squamous pulse of blood through her veins. She emptied her mind of her emotions, first letting go of her discouragement and apprehension, then removing her anticipation and excitement. The past did not matter anymore, and neither did the future. She was here and now, in this room, in this house, on this world in a galaxy teeming with nigh-endless stars and planets spinning through the black. The only things that existed for her were the stone, the hoop, and the Force. Colors swam through her eyes, music entered her ears and undulated through her brain. She could feel the Force like a comforting embrace, the longing clutch of a long-lost and neglected friend. It called to her as she called to it with every fiber of her being, extending herself past her physical limitations and letting something else far older and more knowledgeable than herself inside her, filling her to the brim.

Her hand rose slowly from her lap, the skin tingling as a cool breath of fresh, lukewarm air hissed past her wrist and rose small bumps up and down her arm. The Force vibrated in her fingers, and she imagined the silky, glassy exterior of the stone between her fingers, moving through the air around her head. The stone quivered a moment, then rose seemingly of its own accord to float lazily in front of her face. Her other hand rose, and the hoop's cool metal surface graced her palm; the actual object ascended shortly thereafter, and a flick of her wrist sent the hoop spinning through the air, moving about in tight circles. She heard the music begin to grow discordant, the taste on her lips becoming more bland as her concentration and connection to the Force grew more tenuous.

 _The stone wants to go through the hoop. You exist merely to help it get there._

Tama recentered herself, and began imagining the stone sailing through the middle of the metal hoop without touching the spinning metal. The stone wiggled midair for a moment, then sliced through the air and seemingly attacked the spinning hoop, but it bounced off with a metallic _clang_ she was far too familiar with. Anger swelled within her, and her hands grew hot again, the music becoming heady and intense, fueling the fires of her rage that began to crackle up within her abdomen. The stone whirled around and came zipping at the whirling hoop at a different angle, but the metal deflected it again. The hoop began to shake as well, and Tama could feel the sweat coursing down the back of her neck. The stone curved inward again, and again the faltering hoop denied its passage. She cursed under her breath as she felt her connection to the Force and the control she held over the two objects slipping, and desperately she tried again, but to no avail.

Tama let the objects drop to the rug and put her head in shaking hands, wiping sweat from her brow. This exercise was ridiculous. When or where in the galaxy would she ever need to throw a stone through a spinning hoop? This was the definition of humiliation and an aggravating waste of her time. Was this truly a traditional Zeison Sha test, or was this a cruel, immature joke her sister was playing on her?

Tama silently admonished herself. This was not Foyi's fault. This setback was her own, and she must overcome it herself. She pushed the anger away from her and let its icy clutches on her body loosen and fall away. The stone and hoop rose in the air again, and the hoop began spinning, but this time it wove and bounced through the air, just as Foyi had done the night before. Tama focused on the hoop first, making certain it whirled and jigged around as it should. She imagined the trajectory the stone would have to take to pass through the hoop unmolested, saw every spin of the hoop as if in slow motion. The stone hovered beside it, coming close but not yet venturing through the spinning metal. Tama was still watching the hoop, watching as the thin metal revolved and whorled, appearing to slow more and more until it seemed to be barely moving. Then, she urged the stone to leap through the space, as it was now slow enough for it to safely pass through, and without further ado, the stone meandered through the hoop and emerged from the other side unscathed.

Tama blinked several times in surprise as her unfocused vision became aware of the immediate reality about her. The hoop was still spinning as fast as she could manage, and the stone still following it like a lost anooba pup. It took her a moment to process that the stone had actually slipped through the spinning ring. And it had felt effortless, even predetermined, because she had stopped focusing on the stone and instead became familiar with the metal hoop's rhythm and motion. The hoop, or discblade, was the object of the lesson; it was simple to throw a stone around, but one must be intimately aware of and in tune with the end goal, the destination of the stone as well. It was a lesson in awareness and mindfulness. Before she could stop herself, she felt overwhelming excitement boil over within her, and she leap to her feet with a enthusiastic, "Stang, yeah!"

Her excitement caused the Force to swell within her, like she had been starving one moment and full of rich, delicious food the next. Consequently, the stone and hoop were flung away from her, clattering to either side of the room, as she had lost her telekinetic grip in her excitement. But it did not bother her, for she had finally passed the test. And not merely by chance or mishap, but because she had finally understood the exercise and how to complete it. She hurried to the rug again, dropping into a squat and using the Force to call the two objects to her, which both began revolving around her once more as she focused her telekinetic powers. It was a simple thing to watch the revolving hoop, to become intimately familiar with its motion, as if time did not run as quickly for the metal ring as it did for every other object in existence. It was a simple task to move the stone through the hoop, to imagine it passing through the whirling space back and forth, even doing little midair whorls and loops as it did. An hour passed, and by that time, she had made the stone jump through the spinning hoop a half-dozen times, and did it in style for the majority of those. By the end of the hour, Tama finally felt confident that she would be able to pass this test when Foyi required it of her, and her training could resume to new, more challenging tests.

Tama did not fear the challenges that her sister would throw at her in the unknown future. She believed that this test, above all other lessons she had learned up to this point, had taught her how to be truly aware of all aspects of a challenge. To not only focus on the catalyst of a goal, but the goal itself. To remain in the present, to extend one's senses until nothing in her present environment surprised her. To not only use her own senses, but to rely on her instinct, her feelings, her perceptions, to which the Force constantly nudged and whispered.

To trust the Force.

Tama spent some time tidying up the kitchen and her room, more to waste idle time than out of any responsibility to clean up after herself. She wanted Foyi to come back home so that she could show her sister her success. But Foyi remained absent; it was not uncommon for her older sister to leave and be gone on various errands and tasks for the entire day. And of course, Foyi never consulted with Tama, and only rarely bothered telling her sister where she was going or what she was doing.

Tama put aside the remaining dishes with a sigh and retreated to her room, where she retrieved her coat and cloak, in which she swaddled her form with. Wherever Foyi was, she was most likely busy disposing of the stolen stormtrooper bike, which could take an inordinate amount of time, especially if the local Imperial forces were out on patrol today. She hated waiting around and doing nothing anyway when there were so many more interesting things she could be doing, fascinating people she could be talking to. Even if her sister did not approve.

Tama slipped through the door of their home into the blustery cold, the wind, not as strong or prevalent as the night before, still carrying a chill that felt like it was gnawing the flesh from her bones. She readjusted the overlarge hood on her head and the heavy muffler about her nose, mouth, and chin. Snow and sleet were whipping through the air in intermittent sheets, clinging to her cloak and burning against her skin. The air rushed through her nostrils and throat like burning ice, scrubbing the passages raw, leaving them sore and her gasping. But winter, no matter how fearsome it was, was no stranger to a native of Yanibar, and so she merely pressed forward, huddled against the frigid fangs of the wind and the ice it brought with it.

In the streets, the low buildings of the town served to provide some relief for foot traffic from the oppressive winds, though it invariably created impromptu wind tunnels that seared what little skin she had left exposed under her cloak. She passed the occasional resident, and steered wide of a small contingent of snowtroopers, who marched in perfect military cadence, despite the snowdrifts and the strength of the wind. Tama noticed with some suspicion and not a small amount of concern that there appeared to be a greater Imperial presence on the streets today. She could not help but wonder if Foyi's actions from the day previous were the cause of this increased attentiveness by an understaffed and under-supported garrison on the edge of the Outer Rim. She momentarily considered going back to the house and waiting for her sister to return, or even going out to Foyi's usual haunts and warning her, but she was most likely kilometers away. Besides, Foyi was a Zeison Sha Warrior, fully aware of the consequences of her actions. If she could not handle herself, there was little Tama could do to aid her.

Tama ducked through side streets and slunk along alleyways, trying to stay away from the main avenues to not only avoid the occasional vehicular traffic, but more importantly, the Imperial patrols. She enjoyed the narrow alleys, anyway; this was where the town's underworld, such as it was, thrived despite Imperial oppression. Places and passages like these were where the few remaining Zeison Sha met in secret, sometimes coordinating strikes on Imperial emplacements and supply lines, always attempting to subvert their rule over this planet, and to make invalid their claim over the lost Sha Kalan. She was not an accepted or recognized member of the Zeison Sha yet, but she liked to believe that meandering through such places made her a part of something greater, something good, something that refused to be corrupted by the rotten core of the Empire. She felt a part of it all, in spirit, if not in actualization.

But it was the destination that so excited her, that drove her forward through the unending snowstorm, to the edge of town, where many of the most recent and grungy buildings had been established. Her goal was the spaceport, a small collection of docking bays and hangars, such as they were, that drew traders of varying levels of scruples from all across the galaxy. Inevitably, these hangars were accompanied by the small but colorful sprawl of cantinas, junk stores, chop shops, pawn markets, and other such entrepreneurial businesses vying for the attention of travel-weary outlanders. Tama loved the atmosphere the spaceport generated almost as much as those who chose to visit her lonely and dangerous little dust ball. The feel of adventure, opportunity, and endless experience mixed with the smell of cooling thrusters, spilled oil, leaking hyperdrives, alien sweat, and the tang of consumed spice. The offworlders were just as interesting, members of so many different species, few of which she could recognize, or even name if put to the test. They were all from different backgrounds and hailed from worlds on either end of the galaxy. Some were friendly, most were less so. But she had found that many of them, if amicable enough or under the influence of strong alcohol, would share stories with her when prompted. Some were bold-faced lies recounting imagined personal exploits. Some were rumors and conjectures involving the latest events in the galaxy; she especially enjoyed it when one of the spacers would have a somewhat reliable recounting of the Rebellion against the Empire. Some shared yarns or tall tales that had been told and retold in taverns and cantinas all across the galaxy. And some, especially those who landed in the spaceport on occasion, would simply sit and talk with her, unabashed to be seen conversing with a local kid. There were only a few such individuals, but they were her favorite, and everytime she made her way to the spaceport, she did so with the hope that one or more of her "favorites" would be present to carry on a stimulating conversation with, where her opinions and views mattered as much to them as theirs did to her.

She soon found the outskirts of the spaceport, inherently drawn there by the familiar paths and her own growing excitement. A rumble split the sky as a Corellian freighter circled one of the open-air docking bays, attempting to make a safe landing in the torturous winds and obscured vision. Tama did not know enough about starship designs to identify which line of models the freighter hailed; she wondered if it was truly from Corellia, or whether its pilot hailed from some other planet she would most likely never see. She passed a pair of Houk shambling drunkenly through the snow, skirted a small group of babbling Aleena, and dodged a SoroSuub V-35 Landspeeder as it came roaring down the street near its uppermost speed limit, despite the high velocity of winds and the beings occupying the street on foot. Through the whirling ice she could see the familiar contours of the squat cantina she always visited, a popular watering hole for the largest and most interesting variety of spacers, smugglers, and scoundrels she had found in the spaceport. Its dirty, windowless exterior was not inviting to the average, local customer who just wanted a drink and some light conversation, but for the smugglers, spicerunners, and death stick dealers who wanted to meet clients surreptitiously and make a fast cred without drawing too much attention from the lacking Imperial presence on Yanibar, Fezzie's Fogblasters was the perfect joint.

Tama passed a snowtrooper who was looking longingly at the bar, anticipating his shift being over, then slid past a Gotal just emerging from Fezzie's dim interior. The lack of windows made the cantina a particularly dark place, but it allowed its owner and bartender, the eponymously named Fezzie, to set whatever ambiance and mood she wanted with a variety of different illumination and musical techniques. The saloon consisted of a single common room with low tables and large, unwieldy chairs meant to be able to accommodate the varying sizes of posteriors of dozens of species. Some of the tables doubled as dejarik boards or surfaces for sabacc, though there was a management-sanctioned area in the corner for such games of chance, of which Fezzie got a reasonable cut. In the back, a trio of doors led to a pair of refreshers and the bar's backroom, where most of the questionable food was prepared by a Verpine chef. On the far end, a small stage held a holorecording of one of Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes' concerts, supposedly live from the the Desilijic Complex on Tatooine. The holographic Bith were hammering out a lively rendition of "Worm Case", and the lights in the bar were flashing blue, white, and red in accordance with the beat, which was momentarily disorienting for Tama's vision.

The bar was packed today, the storm preventing most sane pilots from lifting off on their respective, planet-hopping voyages, displaying a staggering assortment of aliens imbibing alcohol, spice, playing sabacc, conversing quietly, or simply sitting, staring off into space. Tama obstinately shoved her way through several patrons making return trips to the bar, then hopped on one of the egregiously tall stools, resting her elbows on the greasy counter but keeping her hands far away from its level surface. Behind the bar was the fascinating automixer machine Fezzie had had as long as Tama had known her, though the machine looked as if it was older than the Clone Wars, and made a teeth-gritting grating sound every time it prepared a drink. Directly behind the bar was a short flight of stairs leading to a raised dais, and upon that miniature stage, scuttling between patrons, was the Chadra-Fan who went by the name Fezzie. Tama had no idea what the diminutive alien's real name was, which put her in the same circumstance as most of the rest of the town, a condition she was certain that Fezzie preferred it that way. She was currently serving an already seriously inebriated Ithorian one of her signature fogblasters when she caught sight of the young Twi'lek and made a guttural chirp in the back of her throat that Tama had come to recognize as a sign of annoyance or displeasure.

"Big Green Fish's gills, kid, I told you to stop coming around here!" came Fezzie's customary "greeting". Despite being a Chadra-Fan, Fezzie was not particularly pleasant nor accommodating, and her voice was surprisingly guttural and masculine.

"Hello to you too, Fezzie," Tama replied pleasantly. "I'm looking for a man. He's an occasional customer of yours. Comes in here a lot."

"Hon, we're all looking for a man. Good luck on finding yours, but I've got paying customers to take care of, so if you could just bounce off back into that blizzard and out of my fur, I'd be mighty appreciative."

Tama ignored the sour response and blunt attempt at ending the conversation prematurely. "His name's Pash. He's human, kind of tall, dark fur on his head, some fuzz on his face, carries a DH-17. Seen him today?"

Fezzie's beady eyes rolled in her head for a moment, then she hissed, "Yeah, I seen him today. Last I saw, he was heading to the 'fresher. You can check in there if you want, but I can't be responsible for anything unfortunate happening to you."

Tama grinned and hopped off the stool, knowing the Chadra-Fan would get progressively more cantankerous if the Twi'lek chose to occupy the seat for much longer. She weaved her way through the crowd, keeping the flickering holographic sign denoting the location of refreshers in sight, until she found herself a nice, quiet seat near those doors. She sat down, and immediately realized she had sat in something sticky, and chose to remain standing. A Devaronian passed her on his way to the refresher, opening his maw in a leering flash of fangs in her direction, to which she responded with a curt nod. There was a whoop of triumph from one of the sabacc tables as a Dug apparently won the pot. The ululation was cut short by his Aqualish opponent punching him the mouth, which began a temporary brawl on the floor. This was cut short by the third player, a Wookiee who reached down, hoisted both aliens in the air, and knocked their heads together hard enough to break skin and induce unconsciousness, after which the Wookiee calmly collected the entire pile of credits from the table and left, humming along to the beat set by "Worm Case".

Tama thought of what Foyi would say if she knew that Tama was hanging around in such a rough and violent place. That thought made her grin all the wider. She loved this place.

Tama started when the refresher door ground open, but her hopes were dashed when an Ishi-Tib stumbled out and nearly tripped over the large, clawed foot of a nearby seated Barabel. Her attention returned to the crowd, casually scanning the faces of so many different lives and stories. What they could all tell her, teach her; the heady thought was marvelous and astounding.

Her gaze ceased its roaming, however, when she locked eyes with another's gaze, focused directly on her. Those dark eyes belonged to a Houk sitting at a booth near the door, dressed in travel-weary clothing and patchwork armor, several daggers and a couple well-worn blasters shoved into holsters on his belt and bandolier. Beside him sat another Houk, so similar in appearance to the first, it made Tama wonder if they were brothers. The booth also contained two other beings, one an exotic Zygerrian, the other a grim Weequay. All of them were disproportionately armed, sporting large, nasty scars, and cartel tattoos belonging to a _kajidic_ she did not recognize. When she cast her glance their way, they were all unabashedly staring at her and her specifically, but upon realizing she had spotted them, they returned their attention to the untouched drinks before them.

Tama's good mood was brought down a few notches as she watched the four strangers for a moment. A small, nagging voice in the back of her mind suggested that Foyi may have been right in wanting her to steer clear of the spaceport; there were plenty of hostile and unscrupulous characters who came through here. She took a moment to stretch out with her feelings, to feel the Force as it made the smell of spice and sweat a sweet aroma, and the sound of the music became a symphonic ode to joy itself. She heard a slight, discordant note coming from the direction of those who watched her, but nothing that made her danger sense scream. Her momentary fear melted away, and she felt peace once more, bolstered by her earlier success in her practice. The Force was with her.

She turned her head at the sound of the refresher door sliding open, disgorging a human male with a slight frame, a rounded face, a short, unruly mop of black hair atop his head and three-days' worth of stubble on his strong jaw. His skin was light, his quick, darting eyes hazel, and creases at the corners of his mouth betrayed his penchant for an easy, if insincere, smile. He was clothed in a dusty blue heavy coat that almost reached his ankles in length. Devoid of sleeves, he left the coat open to show the long-sleeved tunic he wore beneath, as well as the bandolier of stuffed pouches and ammo holders, while a similarly-laden equipment belt held a torn pair of spacer's trousers up. Barely seen in the folds of his swaying coat was the holstered DH-17 Blaster Pistol he kept belted to his side. As he stepped out of the bathroom, a wide grin returned to Tama's face, though he did not initially see her, as he was preoccupied with closing his fly.

Tama rushed to him and embraced him in a surprise hug. He spluttered for a moment, raising his fists as though he were being attacked, but stopped when Tama exclaimed happily, "Pash! You're actually here! It's so good to see you!"

Pash gave a short chortle as he patted her on the back, slightly embarrassed. "Wow. If I knew I was going to get this reception everytime I came to this nowhere dust ball, I would come to Yanibar more often. C'mon, let's sit down, you're making the regulars nervous. Or excited. I'm not sure which, to be honest."

The pair of reunited friends found a booth in the corner, where a half-consumed fogblaster sat, abandoned. Pash sniffed at it, shrugged, and took a swig, gasping appreciatively afterward. Wiping the tears the strong alcohol had raised in his eyes, he focused on the young Twi'lek sitting across from him. "So, how's Yanibar been lately, little wormhead? Boring and ridiculously dangerous as usual?"

Tama giggled and nodded. Coming from anyone else, the slang "wormhead" would have elicited at least a strongly worded retort from her at best, or a punch in the face at worst. But for some reason, she had never felt offended when Pash used the term; it was like his own special nickname for her, made all the more special by the fact that he was one of the few regular spacers always willing to drop whatever he was doing to at least have a few minutes' conversation with her. If Tama had been asked to name any offworlders she could count as friends, Pash would be the only one on the list. "I don't think anyone's described this planet any better. Yanibar's pretty much the same...I guess it's not so bad living here, if you don't mind bored stormtroopers, storms large enough to scare gundarks, and voorcats prowling the wastes. I love it here."

Pash laughed at her sarcasm and took another sip of the stolen fogblaster. "I'll bet you do. I bet you actually asked the powers that be for this kriffin' blizzard that's got all us spacers grounded too."

"Of course. I had to see you and ask how you've been."

Pash gave a self-depreciative smirk. "Well, things have been better, kid. I was doing real good on the swoop racing tracks in The Landing, on Lamaredd. I even got a spot in the Cargo Track 3000, and I was going to make it big. But debts always come back to bite ya, Tama, especially when you're not making enough money to pay them off. So I lost my winnings, I lost my bike, and I hit the hyperlanes again to seek my fortune."

"And how's that going for you?"

Pash made a face. "Well, I'm hauling _patogga_ and sweesonberry rolls for a small-time confectionist on the Wheel. How do you think it's going for me?"

Tama felt sorry for her friend, and she had not meant to let the chuckle that escaped her throat known, but the way Pash had relayed his situation with such a carefree air, she could not help it. Pash gave her a stern face for a moment, but then he broke into another smile and finished off the drink before him. She continued laughing, but finally stifled her mirth and apologized. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh. You just have the worst kind of luck all the time."

He shrugged. "I don't know. I think my luck's been pretty good so far. I mean, yeah, I've fallen on hard times more than once. But I could have been in the spice mines of Kessel by now. I know I've been threatened with it enough times by various government officials. Instead, I'm here, with a cargo hold full of pastries, my best friend on this whole wide world sitting across from me, and Figrin D'an pumping 'The Sequential Passage of Chronological Intervals' straight into my brain. Not to mention this fogblaster curdling in my gut. _Sithspit_ this stuff is nasty. What does Fezzie do, bathe in her alcohol and wring it outta her fur and into the cups? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I taste more Chadra-Fan than I do fog..."

Tama could not help but guffaw at Pash's undying optimism and levity. After a moment, he joined in. Afterward, the two spent the next half-hour or so conversing, catching up on recent events and generally just enjoying each others company. The density of the crowd began to thin out as the wind could no longer be heard from outside, and spacers returned to their ships, hoping to escape Yanibar's vacuous pull before another storm made it unsafe to life off. Pash became less-focused on their conversation as more of the offworlders left, but for Tama's sake, he stayed longer than he probably should have, sharing his exploits and what he knew of galactic events, listening intently to Tama's own opinions about such matters. As if they had any validity, considering she had never once left Yanibar, though Tama appreciated the consideration.

Finally, Tama refused to be selfish and hold Pash back any longer, urging him to get going if that was what he needed to do. Besides, she was still so excited about her completion of the disc and stone exercise, that she feared if she talked much longer, she would discuss it, and thus reveal her Force-sensitivity. This was something she could never do, not even to a friend such as Pash. It was far too dangerous a galaxy for Force-sensitives to actively broadcast their powers and connection, and while she could never see Pash turning her into the authorities considering his own checkered history with the law, there were ears and eyes everywhere.

As Pash stood, adjusting the lapels of his coat, Tama looked up at him forlornly and asked, "So...where is the big man of fortune going next?"

Pash grinned. "Well, I gotta make that delivery to the Wheel. I'm already a day late on that shipment, and will probably be another one considering I was hung up by this storm. Which is a shame, considering pastries are an incredibly time-sensitive matter, as you must know."

Tama giggled. "I didn't, but I do now."

"From there, I've been thinking about checking out the scene on Alderaan. I've heard there's good money to be made there for dashing rogues such as myself, and the countryside's beautiful. Lots of opportunity and a change of scenery should do me some good. I'll tell you all about it next time I'm out this way."

Tama embraced him again, feeling a lump in her throat. "Come back soon, alright?"

He patted her on the head. "I'll be back before the next big storm."

"So...tomorrow?"

He laughed at the prompted response to his joke. "If only, Tama. You take care of yourself, little wormhead."

"You too, Pash."

And thus they parted, Pash striding from the cantina and tossing a rakish last wave to the Twi'lek before walking through the door and into the calming weather beyond. There were still a sizable number of people present in the bar, but they were much more calm than their earlier counterparts, and consisted of mostly local regulars. The interesting time at Fezzie's had passed, and Tama still found herself bored, and more than a little sad she had been forced to bid goodbye to someone she genuinely enjoyed spending time with. Feeling somewhat dejected, she began to meander her way to the door, until she reminded herself of passing the test earlier that morning. This immediately brightened her outlook, and with a slight hop in her step, she made for the exit, hoping that Foyi was home now, and they could continue her training so that she might become a Zeison Sha Warrior. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. Fezzie glared at her as she passed, her scowl only becoming more pronounced when the Twi'lek tossed her a cheery wave, then pulled up her hood and ducked out into the snow and wind.

So lost in thought and excitement was Tama that she failed to notice the pair of Houks, the Zygerrian, and the Weequay sitting together standing as she left. Only when she had exited the establishment completely did they begin moving, leaving their drinks untouched as they followed her passage through the door.

* * *

The wind had definitely lessened in intensity, and the snow did not sting her face quite so harshly as Tama emerged into the suddenly-too-bright world. She blinked a few times to shift back into normal light vision, then reset her hood and scarf, and trudged through the drifts across the street, walking parallel to the spaceport in an attempt to reach the alleys and sidestreets she knew so well. She noted with some concern that there appeared to be a much larger number of snowtroopers on the streets, several squads of which were led by officers. And most of them seemed to be converging on the spaceport, even as the sky was rent by the thunder of starships lifting off from their berths and rocketing into the atmosphere. Something out of the ordinary was definitely occurring; she had never seen such activity from the Imperial forces on Yanibar. She hoped neither Foyi nor Pash were somehow involved in this latest development.

Tama darted across the street and out of the way of a Reconnaissance Troop Transporter as it arrogantly hogged the road. She ducked into an alley and sighed in relief at the wind was cut down to a negligible breeze. The constant gales of this planet certainly were taxing, even for one born here and used to it. Tama walked swiftly down the alley and emerged into one of the town's many narrow streets, her eyes watching her footing in the deep snow and patches of wind-swept ice. She turned left, and nearly ran bodily into a large, hulking figure standing in her path. Startled, she let out a small gasp as she looked up to the figure. There stood the first Houk she had spotted looking at her so intently in Fezzie's, and beside him stood the other Houk. Both held blaster pistols trained on her torso. She turned to evade them, but standing behind her, boxing her in between the four of them, stood the Zygerrian and the Weequay, also holding blasters at the ready.

"Wha-?" came her surprised exclamation.

The first Houk reached out and seized her right wrist, asserting in his baritone voice, "Yer coming wid us, wormie."

"Just stay quiet, and you won't be hurt," the Zygerrian said behind her in low, dulcet tones, his grammar and accent suggesting a far more cultured background than his Houk counterparts.

Tama acted completely out of fear, her instinctive reaction causing her to throw caution and secrecy to the wind. Her free hand came up, palm facing the Houks, and she willed them to get away from her. The Force shimmered around her, and the two Houks took the invisible push directly in the guts, throwing them bodily in the air, where gravity deposited them fifteen feet away. Suddenly free, Tama sprinted to the side even as she heard blasters behind her discharge, the Weequay bellowing something in Huttese. She tried to scramble across the street, but the ice beneath her feet betrayed her, and she found herself falling flat on her body. She coughed as the air was threatened to be knocked free of her lungs, and there was sudden pain as a large, heavy boot connected with her ribs. Gasping, she was hauled to her feet by the Weequay, while one of the Houks picked himself out of the snow and seized her wrists, snapping a pair of binders on them.

"What the _kark_ was that?" the other Houk spat as he struggled to his feet, wheezing.

The Zygerrian's leering face was suddenly swimming before her pain-shrouded vision. "I think this little wormhead's some sort of _Jedi_."

"Jeedai?" came the Weequay's response. "Is myth!"

"Yeah? And how do you explain a girl who weighs forty kilos tossing Warg and Utt like stuffed animals? Remember Captain Vri said our buyers' got special interest in younglings with 'talents'? This Jedi girl's gonna make us rich! Plus she fits 'is criteria regarding her age, if I''m a good judge of Twi'lek ages..."

"No," came the Weequay's response. "Is no such thing as Jeedai."

"No one cares if there is or isn't Jeedai," one of the Houks bellowed. "Git 'er off the street an' back to the ship 'fore-"

A single voice rose above the wind, echoing off the buildings, the voice thick with desperation and threat. A voice familiar to Tama's addled mind. "Hey, _murglaks_! Let go of my sister! Now!"


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Foyi stumbled through a deceptively deep drift as her mind lost complete focus on the alley before her and the need for silent speed and inconspicuous stealth, despite the heavy armor and gear she carried upon her slight frame, in spite of the burning sensation that shot through her torso and even into her teeth every time her armor rubbed against her blaster burn. She lost focus as the cold, dark brine of shock, confusion, and fear struck her fully in the face, a wave of shock shuddering through the Force, originating from a source both dear and familiar to her.

 _Tama!_

Foyi abandoned all pretense of stealth, caring not if she drew attention to herself as she sprinted down the remainder of the alley and into the street beyond, an avenue only a few blocks from the bustling spaceport. Only a block away, she saw five individuals, one of them her sister, being bodily hauled out of the snow from where she had been knocked down and savagely kicked. The other four were rough and ragged offworlders, large aliens intent on forcing Tama with them for some unknown and ill purpose. The steadily-decreasing wind was still cacophonous enough to prevent her from hearing exactly what was being said at this distance, though the offworlders were obviously arguing over her. Tama was alive, but she seemed dazed, hovering on the brink of unconsciousness, considering the way she slumped in the arms of the Weequay and Zygerrian.

Foyi felt pure, unbridled anger and cold fear, like the deepest, darkest depths of the sea suddenly boiling over with white-hot magma. Her sister had been hurt, and she had not been around to keep her safe, to protect her from all harm. Unconsciously she felt herself drawing upon those black depths of anger, letting the pain from her wound and the fear for her sister's life percolate and transform that anger into rage. The Force became tumultuous, like Yanibar's brooding, violent storms rising over the horizon to bear down upon any unfortunate or unwise enough to seek shelter. Her voice came out in a fear-twisted shout, and she nearly shrieked, "Hey, _murglaks_! Let go of my sister! Now!"

There was a moment of hesitation as the four would-be kidnappers whirled in surprise to face the lone Twi'lek, her robes flapping about her strange and imposing armor, her _lekku_ twitching with rage, her eyes staring down the sights of the E-11 she had stolen. And suddenly, the moment ended, and without a word of challenge or surprise the pair of Houks, the Weequay, and the Zygerrian opened fire. Foyi immediately dropped in the snow as scarlet fire whizzed over her head. The dark emotions sloshing within her body screamed at her to fire, but the fear for her sister's longevity overrode that impulse, as suddenly dropping her face and blaster into the snow made it impossible to aim carefully; she dared not risk hitting her sister.

Foyi only remained prone for a split-second, rolling to the side and springing to her feet almost as soon as she collapsed. The Zygerrian had slung Tama's limp form across his shoulder and was already making a break for the nearest alleyway, the direction of his flight suggesting his ultimate destination being the spaceport. The Weequay was following directly behind him, leveling a blaster pistol and squeezing off a few shots that came nowhere within lethal vicinity. The Houks were the true threats though, having dropped to their knees and laying down a withering fusillade of suppressive fire. Foyi was forced to retreat into an alley opposite of the kidnappers' side of the street, slamming her shoulder against the stone wall of a local home, hissing at the pain caused by the impact in her wound. She refused to remain stationary or be pinned down. Her sister needed her. Foyi scrambled up the vertical stone wall, the Force giving her a boost of speed that propelled her to the roof, which gave her an immediate height advantage on the Houks and a brief moment of surprise. She depressed the trigger on the blaster, and red fire lanced out across the street, stitching one of the Houk's with red, angry wounds. The Houk gave a gasping squeal of pain as he collapsed forward in the snow, where he writhed and convulsed, still alive despite no less than five laser bolts burrowing into his chest and gut. The second Houk was not so surprised, retreating to the alley his compatriots had used as a means of escape.

Foyi fired another futile shot after the fleeing rogue, though he was already out of sight and thus out of range. But her connection to Tama gave her direction and approximate distance, a distance that was growing by the second as her sister drew closer to the looming, ice-flecked hangars of the spaceport. Foyi gritted her teeth, summoning her anger, her fear, feeling the surge of power and speed that those granted her as she vaulted off the roof and hit the snow-covered street running. Her right hand clutched the pistol grip of her E-11 while her left reached behind her and plucked the discblade from its holster. She felt a completion of body and spirit as she wielded the discblade in conjunction with her personal set of Zeison Sha armor granting her protection. Both armor and weapon had been crafted to acclimate to her own talents and proclivities, both like extensions of her physical self and the spiritual side of her that extended into and comingled with the Force. She could practically feel the discblade humming in her fist, thirsty for the blood of those who had harmed her sister.

She sprinted into the next street that ran parallel to the hangars and landing bays of the spaceport, ducking and evading a pair of landspeeders that nearly bowled her over as she crossed the street at breakneck speed. Foyi ignored the disgruntled cries and insults of the drivers she had inconvenienced, sliding to a halt as the shadows of the high walls surrounding the docking bays. Her eyes flicked back and forth, roaming over the faces of a dozen or so passerby, many of them spacers, all of them looking harried and worried. Her gaze alit upon the back of the fleeing Houk, just as he disappeared through the entrance to a docking bay, the door grinding to a close behind him. She bent forward and sprinted into the wind, angling for the doorway to the docking bay, which, sensing her presence, began to slide open. Foyi sank beneath the dark, turbulent waves of the Force and dropped into a slide, her speed and the ice coating the ground providing her momentum as she slid forward, partially on her back and her posterior. Her slide carried her through the entrance and into a sort of lobby or terminal, which was walled on three sides with a low ceiling that opened into the roughly circular, open-air expanse of the docking bay. In the center of the bay, snow melting atop its warming engines and ice clinging to the contours of its viewports, sat a Maka-Eekai L4000 transport, its rusted gray hull plating decorated with a few haphazard slashes and stripes of fading maroon paint. Emblazoned upon the hood over its cockpit was a faded symbol she could not identify, though it appeared Huttese in origin. Its boarding ramp was lowered to the ice, and standing at its base, their weapons at the ready, were three unrecognizable Houks and two more Weequay, parting to allow the Zygerrian and the Twi'lek still dangling over his shoulder to run up the ramp. And by the corner of the far end of the terminal, using the wall as cover while he aimed his blaster at the entrance from around the corner, was the Houk who had fled her initial onslaught.

All of these details Foyi observed in a millisecond, even as she was still sliding forward, though her momentum was slowing as her rear skidded across stone flooring mostly bereft of ice. Her blaster shifted in her hand, and even as the Houk fired above her head, having expected her to enter standing upright, she returned fire, and the laser bolt struck the Houk in the clavicle. He was thrown backwards, sprawling on the bay's stone floor, smoke and blood erupting from the mortal wound.

The thugs at the base of the ramp needed no other prompting to open fire, their greater numbers and Foyi's position causing her to dodge and weave as quickly as possible, the Force guiding her movements as she sought an avenue of escape. The "terminal" had become a veritable killbox, in which she was the target, trapped by the heavy crossfire. None of the Houk or Weequay were particularly accurate, but most were armed with blaster rifles, and were apparently unaware that their weapons were equipped with other firing modes besides autofire. Foyi ducked low and scuttled forward, returning fire as best she could, her left hand sweeping back and forth in a blur, the Force-crafted edge of the discblade blocking and reflecting blaster bolts off course. But one of the bolts found her hip, searing the side of it, the skirt of her armor taking most of the punch from the blow, though she felt her skin bubbling beneath in another serious burn. She dropped into a roll that became a low scramble, finally emerging from the confines of the terminal and into the actual docking bay itself, where the lack of a roof allowed the wind to swirl down and around in a helical fashion. Snow was flying every which way, obscuring the opponents' vision. Foyi sprinted perpendicular to the mercs' firing line, firing her blaster over her shoulder as she ran, angling for a prodigious pile of crates and cargo cylinders stacked along the docking bay's inner wall. One of her wild shots tagged a Weequay in the shin, and he sprawled on the boarding ramp, shrieking as a Houk began to drag him up the ramp and into the ship's interior. Foyi slid behind the cover offered by the cargo containers, the thud and screams of blaster bolts impacting the containers' metal ringing in her ears. The noise from the L4000's engines had grown from a high-pitched whine to a throaty roar that filled the docking bay with deafening noise, despite the insistent howls of the icy zephyrs swirling down into the open space. As she huddled behind the thick cover, cowering from the withering assault upon her position, Foyi felt the cold fingers of a new, darker wave caress her heart. The ship was lifting off, taking her sister with it, to the unimaginably vast and incomprehensibly complicated galaxy, where she could be lost forever. Foyi could not let this happen, but while the cargo provided protection, they also served to arrest her mobility. She could not show as much as a finger without the kidnappers shooting it off.

She wracked her brain, trying to think through the suffocating haze of negative emotion, the black turmoil of the darker waters of the Force. But the entire situation changed drastically when she saw movement by the gaping opening of the terminal, and two squads of snowtroopers emerged in the hangar, their leader shouting orders at the mercs across the expanse, ordering them to cease fire and to halt the startup sequence of their starship. The thugs answered predictably with another fusillade of blasterfire, though this was aimed at the snowtroopers and not at the hidden Twi'lek. Three snowtroopers collapsed in the snow in the initial blasts, while the rest began to spread out to set up a crossfire, some dropping to one knee and taking careful aim before firing. The docking bay was filled with the screams of deadly lasers and shrieks of the injured and dying. The engines only grew louder, accompanied by the whine of hydraulics that could barely be heard, unless someone was actively listening for such a sound, which Foyi was. She peered over the nearest container with tears brimming in her eyes as she saw the last of the Houks retreating into the L4000's belly, the ramp sliding closed behind him. One Houk and both Weequay lay on the ground, dead or dying. The snowtroopers poured fire at the ship mercilessly while two of their number attempted to hastily establish an E-Web Repeating Blaster, as small arms fire had little effect on hull plating capable of weathering starship-class weaponry. But they would be too late, for the L4000's landing gear had already retracted, and with a roar of drives, it shot vertically upward, clearing the confines of the docking bay before turning its nose skyward into the turbulent atmosphere and rocketing into the sky, the blue light of its afterburners fading rapidly in the distance.

Foyi felt a sob choking her throat as the blue lights disappeared into the clouds, taking her sister with them. Her sister was in danger, and could very well be lost to her forever. She had failed to protect Tama, and thus had lost everything she had, everything she held precious in this world.

The snowtrooper sergeant was speaking into his comlink, yelling orders to his subordinates to spread out and lock down the hangar. The pair of snowtroopers who had been setting up the E-Web turret were now dismantling it begrudgingly. None of them had spotted her, but two of the snowtroopers were already making their patrols, converging on her place of cover almost immediately.

Foyi felt the anger boiling within her again, but its focus had been redirected at herself. Tama was depending on her for the return of her freedom and the preservation of her safety and her life. Tama was her responsibility. Tama was her sister, her last surviving family member, and thus the only person in the entire galaxy whom she truly loved. Whom she would die for, over and over again. Tama was counting on her to save her, and Foyi could not do that if she remained here, wallowing in self-pity until the snowtroopers found her and threw her in the Imperial stockade.

With renewed determination and seething fury, Foyi quickly and quietly peeled away from the cargo containers, scurrying to the shadows by the hangar wall. She concentrated on the Force, submerging herself so deeply and completely beneath its encompassing ocean, that in the perception of most individuals, it would seem that she no longer existed. Stealthily and cautiously, she slunk along the inner wall, ducking between crates and shadows and other places of cover, sometimes passing within meters of particular snowtroopers, but the Force clouded their perceptions and vision, and she made it back to the entrance to the docking bay unmolested. From there, she sprinted back across the street and lost herself in the sprawl of alleys and buildings that was the village, pain flaring through her body from the burns, though a much deeper and more profound pain seared her soul even more so.

* * *

Tama awoke to an impact, the short, concussive force of her limp body hitting a solid, unyielding surface. Her eyes snapped open even as she hissed in pain, the dim lights of the starship interior brilliant in her pain-addled vision. Her hands were still bound beneath her, though she was able to use them and her knees to move up to a kneeling position; pain shot through her ribs and her side, forcing a gasp from her lungs. She found herself in the cargo hold of a starship she could not identify by its interior. The floor was stained and splattered with oil, the regurgitated contents of alien stomachs, and several dark smears of something that looked horribly like blood. Behind her, at the top of the boarding ramp, stood the Zygerrian, breathing heavily and running shaking fingers through his wild shock of scarlet hair. Around her in the dimly-lit bay stood several Houk, as well as a couple Weequay, most of them gasping for breath or holstering weapons. Tama made the mistake of looking one of the former in the eyes, and he swept down with his heavy fist in a strike that was far faster than a humanoid of his size would be expected to move. The blow connected with her jaw, and she spun to the deck, swimming in and out of consciousness as her world descended into a scintillating kaleidoscope of colors and hues.

When her vision no longer swayed and swam, she looked up to see a new Weequay standing over her. He was tall and lean, with prodigious dreadlocks hanging over his shoulder, a green bandana with white stripes across his protruding forehead. His dark eyes showed a perverse, self-amused glee, accompanied by a smirk that held no mirth or friendliness at all. He was dressed in a tight-fitting jacket made from nerf leather and spacers' trousers, while across his shoulder, clasped with a single gilt chain, was a wampa pelt that served as a sort of cape. On his hip rode a DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol, and at his belt was holstered a large and ornate vibrosword. He stared into her frightened gaze for a long moment, then returned his attention to those around him. "This being the new acquisition, eh?"

The Houk who had struck her answered first. "Aye, Cap'n Vri. This being her; she special, too. Some kinda Jeedai or something. She threw Warg an' I ten meters without ever once touching us none."

The Weequay known to her only as Captain Vri turned his head back and forth for a moment, then narrowed his gaze, his smirk becoming a scowl. "An' where is Warg? An' the rest of my crew?"

"They is dead or too hurt to keep up, Cap'n. We was attacked by another wormhead, an' she moved and shot too fast for 'em. Then we ran into a buncha stormies, and we nearly got away with our lifes!"

The Weequay Captain's scowl only grew more sour. "Once again, you've failed to keep a low profile. You nerfherders are s'posed to keep under the radar, not alert all the Imps in this system an' the next over!" His voice lowered to a dangerous purr as his attention returned to the prone Twi'lek at his feet. "Me men says you're being a Jeedai. I met Jeedai before, long time back, in the big Clone Wars. So let's see what you kin do, wormie."

The Houk who had punched her whispered to one of the Weequay beside him, "Tol's ya Jeedai is real. Cap'n says so."

"Shaddup, _sleemo_."

Tama looked up defiantly at the Weequay Captain, setting her quivering lips in a grim line and refusing to acquiesce to his demand. Captain Vri only held her gaze for a moment, then made a disappointed clucking sound in the back of his throat and regarded his subordinates. "Drug 'er and throw 'er in Cargo Bay D wit' the others. We got plenty fer Yuelo, an' we'll add her to the shipment to the Shepherd. Then get back to yer stations; it's a long way to Point Nadir."

Tama's violence-addled mind and the ringing in her ears was making it difficult for her to process outside stimuli, though she knew she had just received valuable information. But her struggling mind was unable to think through what she had just learned, and none of the names of people or places the captain had spoken of sounded remotely familiar to her. The Zygerrian's hands were suddenly grasping her upper arms, and as she weakly attempted to struggle free, someone off to the side and only visible in her peripheral vision shoved a needle into her arm. The darkness at the edges of her vision suddenly spread, until all she could see were thin tunnels of indistinct light and form. Her desperate gasps became slow, steady breaths. The last thing she was consciously aware of was her mind screaming at her to stay awake, and all she knew plunged within the depths of unconscious oblivion.

* * *

The town over the next day or two changed drastically, becoming almost unrecognizable as the Imperial garrison stationed there took every measure to consolidate a military show of force in the town. The spaceport was on lockdown, awaiting the arrival of reinforcements most likely in the form of shuttles and TIE Fighters. Squads of snowtroopers actively paraded through the streets, often accompanied by the few Reconnaissance Troop Transporters available to the garrison. There were checkpoints for vehicles and pedestrians at nearly every intersection, while the alleys were prowled by Mark IV Sentry Droids, their cameras sweeping and recording anything that moved or even looked remotely "suspicious". If one had asked the commander of the garrison, he would have proudly claimed that the new security measures made certain that the Imperial forces in the town knew of every event that occurred within its boundaries. And his claim would not be far off from the truth.

After her failure to rescue her sister at the docking bay, Foyi had retreated across town, hiding out in the same warehouse in which she had stashed the stolen 74-Z, spending hours in Force-induced healing trances to counteract the horrendous burns she had suffered. The trances had taken far longer than she had originally anticipated, for such an ability required inner peace, spiritual serenity, and careful concentration. All three of these she found incredibly difficult to accomplish, as she had not felt this much emotional and spiritual turmoil since the loss of her parents. The Force was like a sea of endless black waters, constantly stirred into choppy, icy sprays by cold winds. She felt raw, physically and emotionally, as if the skin of her existence had been flayed from her and she had somehow survived, and must contend with the radically different circumstances. Circumstances she could barely comprehend, much less mitigate. It all felt like a dream, a nightmare she struggled to awake from with every fiber of her being, though she still felt like she was drowning.

Foyi was only able to remain hidden in the abandoned warehouse for the first day, for in the early morning of the second, despite the heavy snowfall, the stormtroopers and their Sentry Droids were already sweeping the abandoned buildings and junk piles on the edge of town. Like a scared womp rat, she had slunk from her temporary home and taken to the streets, constantly on the move, despite the faded but nagging pain of her injuries, wandering through the town with no direction, no purpose. Her mind was completely occupied the entire time, however, as she wracked her brain for some sort of fool-proof plan in which she might save her sister. She knew she could not remain here, dodging Imperial checkpoints and patrols. Eventually, she would be caught, and then she would be cut off from her sister completely.

By the third day, Foyi had taken shelter in various small, residential sheds and shacks, giving herself enough time to more completely heal, and develop the vestiges of a plan to locate and rescue Tama. By the evening, she had carefully traveled across the town, shivering in the cold, everything she now owned in the world either worn on her person or in the satchel on her back. She gave several snowtrooper patrols a wide berth as she meandered toward her destination, glimpsing the contours of the squat, ugly facade of the building known as Fezzie's Fogblasters through the whirling snow.

Its interior was dark, most of the lights having been turned down to their lowest settings to make it difficult for any Imperial personnel entering the premises to identify individuals, providing its patrons a certain measure of anonymity. The catchy beat of "Kick the Ranat" played over the general tumult of voices and inebriated conversation, originating from a holo on the far stage depicting a set of musicians consisting of an Ortolan, a Kitonak, and a Pa'lowick on vocals who had one of the most grating voices the Twi'lek had ever heard. Floating Aurebesh letters named the holographic musical group as the Max Rebo Band, and the current performance was supposedly live from the Blue Moon, wherever the hell that was. Foyi paused a moment beside the door to survey the crowd, seeing the establishment packed nearly to the brim with spacers trapped on Yanibar by the Imperial lockdown, as well as disgruntled residents who wanted to lose themselves and their troubles in the bottom of a fogblaster. She opened herself to the Force, feeling its waves lapping at her consciousness, charged with the electric tension of fear and frustration. A momentary scuffle broke out in one of the corners where sabacc matches were held, though few of the patrons even paid attention to it, so absorbed in their own interactions or the preservation of their solitude, depending on the preferences of the particular patron.

Her eyes alit on the bar, almost all the stools of which were taken by beings downing shots or ordering consistent rounds of drinks. The owner and primary operator of the establishment, the Chadra-Fan known simply as Fezzie, looked haggard and worn, rushing back and forth on her dais, trying to keep track of the number of drinks and variety of orders. Through a window into the back kitchen, Foyi caught glimpses of the Verpine preparing the aforementioned orders. Foyi could not even begin to read the body language of a Verpine, but the chef looked similarly harried.

Foyi stalked across the cantina's floor, the music thudding against her eardrums and providing a cadence to her determined step. She slid onto a barstool beside a Rodian man nursing his drink and dropped her pack to the floor beside it, glowering over her folded hands as she stared intently at Fezzie, barely controlling her urge to leap across the bar to throttle the diminutive biped. Fezzie did not even see her at first, topping off the drinks of three Ithorians, sliding two fogblasters to a portly Zabrak, and slopping a thick, viscous liquid in a mug for an Arconan. The Verpine thrust a couple trays through the window, which Fezzie then slid across the bar to a couple of humans, the action of which shifted the Chadra-Fan's beady gaze enough for her to perceive Foyi. She pattered over to stand before her, her gaze judgmental and suspicious. "Foyi...been awhile. If you're looking for your sister, I can only tell you she was in here a day or two ago, and spent the whole time bothering me and my customers again. Didn't buy a damn thing, either."

Foyi folded her hands on the greasy bar and regarded the rude Chadra-Fan with a mixture of anger and disdain. "Yes, I am looking for my sister, though not her specifically. I need to know everything you know about some...characters she got involved with. Characters even more disrespectful than you. There was a Zygerrian, a few Houks, and a Weequay or two. Maybe they visited this lousy joint the same time my sister did."

Fezzie's dark gaze grew even more unfriendly, and through clenched teeth, she gave an angry whistling retort. "You know, I've never really liked your sister, but at least she pretends to be a decent customer. Perhaps you should learn from her."

"The spacers I was talking about. Did they come in here or not?"

Fezzie crossed her arms indignantly, letting out a breathy sigh. "I seem to remember a group such as you describe sitting at the booth by the door a few days ago. I think it was around the same time as your sister's unwanted presence, though I never saw them speaking with each other."

Foyi leaned forward, more eagerness than anger coloring her expression. "What do you know about them? Where are they from? Where did they go? Who do they work for?"

Fezzie snorted in impatience. "What do you think I am, an archivist droid? They told me nothing about themselves, and I didn't ask, 'cause I didn't care. They bought a couple rounds of drinks which they never drank, but that doesn't matter either, because I still got the creds owed me. That's all I know. You can't find your sister, don't come sniffing at my ears; keep better track of her next time." Effectively ending the conversation, Fezzie turned away and crossed to the other end of the bar, speaking with the obese Zabrak, who wished to order another tray of food, leaving the Twi'lek to simmer with frustration, anger, and the the far darker and more encompassing emotion of hopelessness, dragging her down into the depths of the deepest, coldest waters.

The Rodian man beside Foyi shifted, and out of her peripheral vision she could see that he had turned to face her, his large, multifaceted eyes regarding her strangely and intently. Rodians had always been a species Foyi found naturally repugnant, mostly due to their overwhelmingly powerful scents that smelled like voorcat droppings. A contributing factor of her discomfort around them was the fact that she was unable to read their facial expressions, and even extending her awareness in the Force only produced vague hints as to what any member of the species was actively thinking or feeling from moment to moment. This particular male appeared to be somewhat advanced in age, as his antennae were drooping slightly, and there were gray age patches on his faded green skin, particularly around his eyes. A barely-perceptible sound like the breeze through tree branches devoid of leaves issued from his snout every time he breathed, and his overlong fingers with their adhesive ends had adhered themselves to the countertop. He was dressed in simple, nondescript clothing, and no weapons were visible on his person, though the fact that he sat at the bar with his back facing an oft-hostile crowd suggested he could handle himself.

They held each others gaze for a moment, neither speaking, as if both of them were evaluating whether the other was actually looking at them. "Is there something you need?" Foyi asked in a tone that was far more hostile than it was inviting.

The Rodian bobbed his head, speaking in a soft, sly, reedy voice, his Basic thick with accent. "In this galaxy, many things all need. You need. I need. Perhaps, with cooperation, we no longer need for a time."

Foyi stood from her stool. "Look, pal, you either tell me what's on your mind in simple Basic, or shut your snout. I've got more important things to do than waste my time if you don't actually need anything."

The Rodian seemed undeterred by her hostile attitude. "Little Twi'lek doesn't listen very well. We have needs, which can be filled if we deal."

"Deal? For what?"

"You, for information. I, for credits." The Rodian leaned closer to her, whispering conspiratorially. "I know of the ones you seek. I know of your missing clan-mate. And for right price, you can know as well. Both of us happy, both no longer need. Yes?"

It was at this point that Foyi recognized the man. She had never met him in person, but she had heard rumors of Lido Intamm, the Rodian information broker who lurked around the spaceport, always having a suction-cupped finger on everything and anything of import that occurred on the planet. Most of the rumors agreed that Lido was an offworlder, though from there viewpoints diverged drastically on exactly when he had come to Yanibar, what his purpose was in the village, and how he seemed to know so much. Most gossipers seemed to agree that Lido was directly responsible for halting several small resistance cells and sabotage plans that were meant to be carried out against the local Imperial garrison, as the Imperial command structure on the planet supposedly regularly employed his services to pinpoint and decimate their enemies. If asked, most people in the village and the spaceport would attest that Lido was not to be trusted for any reason whatsoever, though he could supposedly be counted upon to act in the manner that would benefit him the most monetarily. As with any information broker, he realized the value of secrets, and made certain his clients paid top credit for them.

Foyi glanced around as her mind whirled. It was distinctly possible that Lido actually knew something about where the kidnappers took her sister, and for what purpose they would do so. But he could most likely tell she was desperate, and would thus try to take advantage of that, requiring her to pay a fee that would be exorbitant beyond belief. It was not that she was not willing to sacrifice all the credits in the galaxy if it would help her get her sister back, but she did not have access to all the galaxy's credits. She only had a little over a hundred credits to her name, the last of the money left by their parents, as well as her earnings from odd jobs over the years she had saved up to help herself and Tama survive. She knew it was wishful thinking to hope that Lido would be satisfied with such a paltry amount.

As she looked down at the Rodian, mentally chewing over his words, she found herself inevitably sizing him up, physically and emotionally, her sense testing his unique presence in the Force. Another idea came to her mind, one she was unsure would work, the very thought of which repulsed her. But then her mind turned to Tama, and the endless possibility of horrors and tortures she could be facing, and Foyi steeled her jaw and her mind.

"That sounds...acceptable," she replied evenly, while the rudimentary beginnings of a reprehensible deception and course of action formed in the forefront of her mind. "You're right, of course. I do need information, and I'm certain you need credits. The problem is, I may have difficulty on providing the necessary amount of credits."

The Rodian's bulbous eyes darkened and narrowed almost imperceptibly. Foyi would not have even noticed the change in mood if she was not currently reaching out through the Force to sense his presence and motive, and through this connection she sensed the choppy, gray waters of his persona shifted more toward blackness. "How much do you have?"

"How much are you asking?"

"At very least two thousand, if the full package is what you will be needing."

"The full package being...?"

"The names of those who kidnapped your clan-sister. Where their ship came from, where it's going. Why your clan-sister was taken. Most likely. Less money than asking, you can pick and choose what you want to know."

She made a show of thinking the offer through, then answered truthfully. "What would a hundred thirteen get me?"

The snort that issued from Lido's snout was obnoxiously loud and wheezy. "Not a _karking_ thing. Have a need to make a living as well, I do."

Foyi leaned forward, dropping her voice to a hoarse whisper. "And what would a large, hot market item thrown in get me?"

Lido's face barely changed, but his mood brightened: she had intrigued him. "To what do you refer?"

"An Imperial 74-Z Speeder Bike. Near-mint condition."

Lido's large eyes narrowed again, and he cast a quick glance about the immediate vicinity to make certain no one was actively eavesdropping on their conversation. "We are speaking military-issue, no?"

Foyi decided to add another tidbit of information, if for no other reason than to draw him in further. "Used to belong to a Scout Trooper, though I don't think he'll have any need of it anytime soon. Or ever."

Lido was most definitely intrigued, as the emotional resonance of his Force signature lit with realization and excitement. "The lost Imperial patrol. You are the responsible party, yes?"

Foyi remained coy, withholding. "I never said that. I just happen to have a 74-Z I know the previous owner won't be coming back for. I know that it's worth a whole lot of credits, and if you're willing, I can make you the proud new owner, assuming your information on those mercs is good."

Lido sat in thought for a long moment, his antennae swaying back and forth slightly. He was making a good show of considering her offer, but Foyi already knew what his answer would be. Rodians may be nearly impossible for her to read with her eyes, but with the Force, his inner thoughts and emotions were laid bare. Lido would take the offer, not necessarily because he needed a speeder bike or wished to turn it around on the black market for a profit, but he would want to confirm that the vehicle in her possession was Imperial property. She knew that if the slippery information broker could confirm the vehicle's existence and associations, he would complete the deal with her, and immediately report her to the Imperial garrison for a massive payout, especially if his information led to her capture and/or subsequent execution.

But Foyi had anticipated this likely course of action on Lido's part. In fact, she was counting on it.

Lido had decided that enough time in his contemplative charade had passed, then sucked in a breathy burst of air through the rubbery lips of his snout. "Agreed, we are. But see the merchandise I must before I call our needs satisfied and our transaction finalized."

Foyi nodded. "I wouldn't have it any other way. If you'll follow me, I'll show you the warehouse where I have the speeder bike stored."

Lido glared at her suspiciously, and Foyi felt a spike of fear through her heart that Lido had suspected, or even divined, her true intentions. But the Rodian took a last, noisy slurp of his lomin ale, and heaved his body off his stool. "Speed and stealth are tantamount. Quickly and quietly we must leave, for the stormtroopers are always watching."

* * *

The abandoned warehouse was mostly undisturbed from the time she had been forced to leave by roving squads of investigative snowtrooper squads. The evidence of the Imperials' searching and rummaging was evident in the fact that most of the junk and salvage had been removed from their original positions, and the snow that had drifted through the open doors and windows had been trampled through the passage of dozens of pairs of boots. But the stormtroopers had not searched deep enough within the small, cramped building, not bothering to move the larger pieces of discarded machinery, bags of trash, and scrapped droid parts. Lido assisted Foyi in removing much of this garbage, until they uncovered the layers of torn tarps and stacks of debris that Foyi had originally used to conceal the bike. The 74-Z was no worse for wear, though most of its angles and surfaces were frosted in a fine layer of ice, which would probably make it difficult to start and run initially.

Lido walked around the vehicle with multifaceted, discerning eyes, his long-fingered hands entwined behind his back. He glanced up at the Twi'lek and asked, "It runs, no?"

Foyi walked to the bike, straddled the seat, and ran through the startup sequence. After a throaty cough, the bike roared to life, thrumming appreciatively as its engine warmed its chassis against the vile cold and the cloying ice. She thumbed the throttle for a moment, letting Lido hear the engines roar, then shut the bike down, not wanting to further risk the possibility that a passerby or neighbor would take notice of the noise and report it to the self-proclaimed authorities. She hopped free of the saddle and leaned over the bike, looking up at Lido's eyes. Her expression, previously open and hopeful, had become hard and thick with the promise of threat, as if carved from rage-filled stone. "And now, Lido, you're going to tell me all you know about those mercs and what happened to my sister."

"Only fair...you gave me bike, and needs are satisfied."

Foyi stood, her fists opening and clenching in anticipation. "I don't think you understand, Lido. I know your type, and I know what it is you plan to do. You plan to run off with this bike after spinning me some story that has just enough truth in it to keep me satisfied, and then you'll go lick the boots of your Imperial friends and sell me out."

Lido had the audacity to look offended, even as his hand snaked into his coat, slowly reaching for the hold-out blaster he kept tucked in a holster in his armpit. "To accuse such is not professional. And to act in such a way as accused is bad for business."

"But Imperial credits are good for business, aren't they? I've seen more than my share of friends and neighbors suffer and die at the hands of the Empire when they tried to stand up for what they believed in. Tried to regain the freedoms they lost when the Empire came marching through this nowhere village. And yet, they were far too often foiled, betrayed and discovered long before they could make any significant moves, by someone who always knew too much and was willing to sell anything. That's who you are, Lido. You may know what happened to my sister, but you also know I won't be able to help her if I'm stuck in the Imperial stockade. I refuse to let this happen. There's no way in hell I'm letting you walk out of here with this speeder bike, only to use it as evidence against me to further prevent me from saving my sister."

Lido sneered, not intimidated, his hand digging deeper in his coat. "You are only one of many who dares threaten me, little _schutta_. You wish not to deal, is fine by me, no? How I conduct my business and who I sell information to none of yours. So if you want the speeder bike so bad, keep it. I care not. But I keep information on your mercs with me."

Foyi's hand was a blur of almost-imperceptible motion as it snaked behind her back and withdrew the E-11 Blaster Rifle from its hidden position in her cloak. She brought the weapon to her shoulder, and kept the Rodian's face in her sights. "You weren't listening to me, Lido. I don't like you very much, and this town, this world, would be better off if they didn't have to worry about you discovering something 'treasonous' and immediately going and licking the Imp boots. But you will tell me of my sister, and you'll do it _now_."

Lido's hand yanked itself free of his coat, producing a hold-out blaster, just as she suspected. But before he could even level the weapon, she shifted her aim a few centimeters, and in the same motion, squeezed off a blaster shot. The laser leapt the intervening space and chewed a hole through the Rodian's rubbery hand, causing him to drop his weapon even as he shrieked in agony. Foyi noted with a distant, mental detachment that the Rodian's normal scent was nothing compared to that of his burning flesh.

Despite his injury, Lido was a survivalist and pragmaticist, and was already running for the dilapidated entrance to the warehouse. But Foyi was too fast, vaulting the bike and landing directly in front of the Rodian with a Force-enhanced leap, swiping the barrel of her blaster rifle into his face. Lido fell flat on his back with a squawk of pain and a undulating moan, curling into a fetal position around his wounded appendage. Foyi could feel her heart thudding in her ears and her _lekku,_ her blood boiling with the heat of emotion, the Force flowing like vile, corrupting water through her veins. She tossed her blaster to the side, straddled the Rodian, and grabbed fistfuls of his coat, forcing his pained face to look up into her scared, hate-filled eyes. "Who are the kidnappers? Where did they take my sister?!"

Lido coughed, a phlegmy, discordant sound that whistled through his flapping snout. "Go...go to hell, _schutta_."

Her fist connected with the Rodian's jaw before she even realized she had swung, the Force behind the blow. The sound of fracturing bone and crushed cartilage erupted in the echoing space, and Lido squealed again, tears leaking from his eyes as he wavered on the edge of unconsciousness. She forced him to lock gazes with her own murderous regard. "You want to try a different answer, _sleemo_? Or am I going to have to hit you again? 'Cause if you want the truth, I'm _really_ enjoying this." She had proclaimed the last sentence as an intimidation tactic, though she realized that it was truth. She could not deny to herself that she was certainly enjoying her own actions and Lido's reactions to them. The deepest, most vile depths of the Force were coursing through her, cresting over her like an overwhelming wave. She could feel Lido's pain, she could feel her own absolute control over his fate. The power to hold the Rodian's life in her hands filled her consciousness, and she was drunk with it. She had never fully used the Force in such a way, nor experienced the dark satisfaction to be found in realizing another living being was completely at her mercy.

Lido's snout was dribbling blood even as a large, black splotch of bruised skin spread across the left side of his face. He worked his mouth, and whimpered as she heard the shattered bits of bone and cartilage in his face moving as he tried to speak. "They're...work for the Anjiliacs, they do. Warg, Utt, Bowarm, Vohlgast..." He moaned pitifully.

Foyi leaned forward, her face drawing within centimeters of Lido's. "What was the name of their ship? Who was their captain? Why do they want my sister?"

Lido shook his head, his eyes barely focusing on anything at all. "Never...knew their ship. Never met their captain. They were drunk one night when I asked them questions, satisfying my need for information...most willingly. They worked for the Anjiliac Kajidic. From Nar Shaddaa, they were, though one of the Houks claimed they worked directly for the Anjiliacs at Point Nadir." He spat a thick glob of blood from his snout. "They're _slavers_. Here they were for a few weeks, kidnapping people who would not be missed, to take them away to Nar Shaddaa. Your sister was only one of many; a good slave girl or prostitute she'll make, yes?"

Foyi slammed a fist into the bruises on his face as a surge of uncontrollable rage welled within her at his words. Lido howled long and loud, which descended into frantic, agonized sobs. Foyi's free hand gripped his throat, and she yelled over his blubbering, "Where is Point Nadir? Are they taking her there, or Nar Shaddaa? Where do I start looking?"

Lido spoke through heavy sobs and squirting blood. "I-I don't know, no? They were drunk, not knowing what they said. Point Nadir is an old spacers' tale, stupid _schutta_. A shadowport safe from all authority, run jointly by the Hutts and other crimelords. It...it's a myth! It doesn't exist!"

"How do you know?!"

"Because Hutts don't share anything! Especially the Anjiliacs!"

Foyi considered his words for a moment, then wrapped her long fingers around his injured jaw. "Then they're going to Nar Shaddaa?"

Lido nodded, too overwhelmed by pain and sobs to speak properly. But Foyi had no time for this; she shook him again, more forcefully this time. "Then where do I start looking on Nar Shaddaa?"

Lido shook his head. "I...I don't...know. Don't ask...me...Look for somewhere...the Anjiliacs hold power, yes?"

Foyi let go of his face and coat, letting him slump to the floor as she stood, the Rodian's information swirling through her brain. Throughout the entire interrogation, she had been intimately attuned to Lido's emotions and mental state, had felt his profound fear and encompassing pain. More importantly, she had sensed the finality and certainty he felt when he gave her his answers. Whether he was relaying facts or not, he believed them to be the truth. And so she would have to operate on the assumption that he knew the truth, and believe it to be so. Which meant Tama would be taken somewhere on Nar Shaddaa, most likely to the infamous slave markets that existed there that so many unfortunate beings, Twi'lek females in particular, were haggled over and bartered for. But she would not ignore the possibility of this place called Point Nadir, wherever that was. It must mean something important, or else the drunk Houk who had spoken of it when conversing with Lido would not have mentioned it.

Lido gave a loud, wailing moan, and Foyi was snapped back to the present. The Rodian was still lying at her feet, broken and maimed, his consciousness fleeting. Seeing him like that made her realize that she must determine what was to be done with him; he knew too much now regarding her and her activities over the past week, activities the Imperials would be all too happy to be informed of. There must be no more distractions, no more obstacles between her and her mission to rescue her sister from the hopelessness and violation of a slave's life. And as she considered what was best for Tama, her decision on Lido's fate was made for her. She stretched out her hand, a current of thought extending from her fingers and further into the warehouse. The E-11 slapped into her palm, and without hesitation, she discharged the blaster into the Rodian's torso. Lido let out a yelp, and the last of his life's breath whistled through his snout before he fell still and silent.

Foyi looked down at the blaster and her hands, small flecks of blood staining the knuckles. Her hands were shaking, and her efforts to still them were in vain. She felt raw, drained, cold, as if she had been lulled into a deep sleep, and the Rodian's death had violently brought her back to wakefulness. She felt revulsion beginning to build within her gut, and she doubled over for a moment as she fought the urge to vomit. She could still feel the Force, though it felt _wrong_ to her. No longer did the power over Lido's life and death bring her pleasure, but now she only felt pain, shame, and self-loathing for her actions. She had lost herself for a moment there; she had let herself fall out of balance, drawing too deeply from the darker aspect of the Force. She had given herself over to the Dark Side for only a moment, and in that time, she had managed to torture and murder a living, breathing, being, who had as much right to live and feel safe as her sister did. She found herself remembering the Zeison Sha Master who had gone out into the wilds to hunt and slaughter every voorcat he could find in retribution for the loss of his family. She remembered the burning, seething hatred glowering in his dark eyes, the way his skin had aged and shriveled, as if his physical forms could barely control the storm of Dark Force energy bound within his soul. She remembered being in his presence even as the other Masters attempted to pull her and the other Initiates away from him. He had felt empty, cold, uncaring, or perhaps caring too much.

He had been like death itself. She could not help looking down at the Rodian corpse at her feet, and think of the Rodian Master who had given himself over to the Dark Side.

But then images of Tama fixing soup, practicing her Force powers, making mynock impressions in the snow with her flailing arms and legs swam into her consciousness. A new urgency shook her from her self-hating reverie. Tama needed her days ago, and her desperation and situation would only worsen the longer Foyi delayed. She had no time for regret or reflection. Whatever she had to do to make her sister safe and happy again she _must_ do, whatever the cost.

She drug the body to the nearest pile of discarded fuel drums and droid parts and with a quick Force shove toppled the haphazard stack atop the corpse, hiding it at least for the time being. If anyone nearby had ignored the sounds of the speeder bike's throttle, they would definitely have reported the blaster shots by now. She probably had only a moment or two before squads of snowtroopers descended on this warehouse, and she was captured or killed. It was time for speed and action. It was time to go and save Tama.

Somehow, she had to get to Nar Shaddaa. And possibly this mythical Point Nadir.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Fezzie was less-than-amused to see Foyi leaning on her bar again; she made her thoughts on the matter abundantly clear by ignoring several customers vying for her attention and specifically facing the Twi'lek, her fur ruffled with anger. "Look, kid. Your sister has not come back here! I told you all I know; you can't find her, that isn't my fault. I've a business to run here, and I can't service _paying_ customers if I am constantly apprehended by freeloading Twi'leks. Get out, and go away!"

Foyi stared long and hard at the Chadra-Fan, but the cantina's proprietor was not intimidated. Foyi had to struggle to maintain control of her emotions. She felt awful, the memory of Lido's death at her hands still hauntingly close in her memory, as if the Rodian's ghost had latched upon her and refused to cease reminding her of her sins. She had withdrawn from the very Force she normally felt so essential to her existence, the calm, deep waters that at any other time would have provided her sustenance and solace. She had to admit that she was fearful of it for the moment, for she knew now, more than ever, that it was not only a source of serenity and belonging, but of passion and power as well. She still felt a sick, queasy feeling in her stomach, as if a nest of larval k'lor'slugs had awoken in her intestines, squirming restlessly. Accompanying this discomfort was the pervasive oppressiveness of time, and the realization that Tama was running out of it. She was definitely in no mood for any of Fezzie's cantankerous _sithspit_ today.

Fezzie remained standing, staring at her, awaiting a response from the Twi'lek. Foyi's _lekku_ twisted and convulsed irritably. "If you're finished, Fezzie, I need to know the whereabouts of another customer. A man my sister speaks to whenever he's in port. Goes by the name of Pash."

Fezzie made a frustrated clicking sound deep in her throat and sighed. A single, clawed finger gestured past the bar, to a booth near the refreshers, where sat a human male in a rather typical, and therefore nondescript, spacer's outfit. Foyi did not even offer a word of acknowledgment or gratitude as she slid off her stool and stalked across the cantina. The music thundered through the intervening space, and the flashes of alternating lighting modes and scintillating colors made her eyes ache, but she did not lose focus upon the man at the booth. He was a younger human, with a short, tousled mop of dark fur on his head and the beginnings of a beard on his face, more likely from a lack of grooming rather than a personal style choice. Before him were three mugs, two of which were empty, and the third filled with a vile-looking liquid that had barely been touched. She slid into the seat across from him and propped her elbows upon the table's surface. The man was slow to react to her uninvited presence, and when he looked up at her, he did so while blinking repeatedly. It was obvious that he had already downed a significant amount of alcohol. Foyi felt anger and frustration bubbling up within her again, though she clamped down upon it almost immediately, not wanting to invite the darkness further in. It would be just her luck that the only other person in this town who cared enough about Tama to risk getting Foyi offworld was inebriated, quite possibly past the point of usefulness. But she had no other options; she had to try.

"You are called Pash?" she asked.

The man grinned in a self-depreciating manner. "Only name they ever gave me." He scrutinized her for a moment, and his eyes lit with recognition. "You must be Tama's sister, Foyim'buma."

"Foyi Imbuma," she corrected irritably. It had always made her _lekku_ twitch hearing a non-Twi'lek using her proper clan name. Further frustration was born of the fact that she realized that Tama spoke much more with Pash about her sister than she had ever shared with Foyi about the smuggler sitting before her. "And you apparently know who I am. You and my sister must speak often."

He shrugged. "Not as often as she would like, I'm sure. She's a great kid, by the way. Never really had much use for younglings myself, but Tama has a good pair of _lekku_ on her shoulders. She's got this...cheeriness mixed with maturity that's hard to ignore. I've always enjoyed my visits to this dustball because of her." He suppressed a hiccup. "Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of _those_ people...I just enjoy talking to her...I ain't some kinda sicko, if that's what you think..."

Foyi twisted her expression into a grimace. "Ever since Tama first began telling me about you, I've kept an eye on you whenever you're onworld. If I thought you were that type of man, I would only feel comfortable knowing my sister was hanging around with you after I had removed your manhood."

If Pash felt threatened by the response, he did not show it. In fact, he seemed to expect it. Or perhaps he was simply too inebriated to respond properly. "That's only fair, I suppose. Nice to finally meet you, by the way. As I'm sure you've gathered by now, Tama's told me a lot about you. A few good things. Okay, mostly good things." He chuckled at his own joke, but the Twi'lek did not share in his mirth. After a tense moment of silence, Pash took a sip from his mug and swallowed noisily. "What can I help you with...Foyi?"

Foyi bowed her head, her _lekku_ drooping dejectedly to the table's surface. "It's...about Tama. I need your help in getting me to Nar Shaddaa."

He looked genuinely alarmed at the mention of the Smugglers' Moon; at least he looked more alert than he had a second ago. "Why...why the hell would you want to go to Nar Shaddaa? And why do you think I might want to go there? That's Hutt Space; I make it a life goal to stay away from anything with the word 'Hutt' in the name." He thought for a moment. "That goes for anything having to do with 'Empire' or 'Imperials' also. What does all this have to do with Tama?"

Foyi kept a stony face, but a tear or two slipped from the corners of her eyes. She could not help it; the onslaught of emotions and stress she had experienced over the last few days was beginning to wear down her composure, and ever fiber of her being. "She's been kidnapped. By slavers working for the Anjiliac clan. My sources say she was taken to Nar Shaddaa, or even possibly someplace called Point Nadir, though I thought Nar Shaddaa would be a more likely place to look, since those same sources say Point Nadir is mythical."

Pash sat and processed her words for a moment. "That's 'cause it is, kid. Point Nadir is a fever dream held and recounted by pretty much any spice-addled smuggler, mercenary, and spacer in the galaxy. It's a shadowport, a spaceport free from government regulations and offering complete anonymity, supposedly built in some far-flung asteroid out of sight of the Empire or anyone else powerful enough to make the natives nervous. Thing is, people go searching for it, thinking it the perfect place to run...less-than-legal business and to hide from the authorities. But no one finds it, 'cause it doesn't exist. So if Tama is anywhere, it would be on Nar Shaddaa, not 'Point Nadir'." He shook his head, overcome by the news for a moment. "Poor kid...stuff like this always happens to the good ones..."

Foyi slammed a fist down on the table, startling Pash's drink and nearly spilling it entirely. "It doesn't _have_ to happen to her! I have to save her! I won't let her be sold off as some Hutt or Zygerrian's slave!" She calmed herself, and when next she spoke, it was with quivering voice. "I need to get to Nar Shaddaa...but I'm no pilot, and I've no ship. I...I need your help, Pash. I ask not for the sake of myself, but for Tama's. Please. I beg you."

Pash smashed his palms into his eyes, rubbing them vigorously. "Look, Foyi; I like Tama. I really do. And I want to help. But the Imps have the spaceport locked down; my ship is held in place by a tractor beam in the docking bay. I'm not going anywhere until the lockdown is lifted; if it's ever lifted."

Foyi considered this new information for a moment, the vestiges of a plan forming in her mind. It was not a great plan, but if she could pull it off, it might just work and get them offworld. "What if...I could help you free your ship? Could you get us through the atmosphere without being shot down by the Empire?"

Pash's regard was skeptical. "Yeah, I think...I think I could do that. As far as I can tell, the Empire has little to no air support on this world, so if we can get my ship out of lockdown, I would only have to dodge those turbolasers on that old temple they took over on the edge of town."

Foyi closed her eyes as another surge of anger wriggled from her core at the mention of the Sha Kalan, the former home of the Zeison Sha and the conquered base of the Imperial garrison on Yanibar. Pash leaned forward, his expression extremely skeptical. "Though I don't see how we can lift the lockdown. There are tractor beams on all the ships in the spaceport, and they're powered by the control room in the customs building on the edge of the docking bays. Someone would have to somehow find their way into that control balcony and shut down the tractor beams at the same time you were prepping the ship, 'cause the second those tractors go down, the Empire's gonna be swarming all over the docking bays."

Foyi leaned forward, her expression hopeful, intense. "I can do it. The tractor beams, I mean. I could shut them down while you start up your ship, and get there before you get shot down by the Imps."

"You must be pretty damn clever. And fast. You know anything about tractor beam controls?"

"Of course," she lied. She did not know the first thing about such technology. But how difficult could it be, if it was run by a bunch of trigger-happy bucketheads? She exuded confidence as she leaned closer to him, nearly standing by this time. "I could shut down all the tractor beams for the entire port, so that all the spice-runners and smugglers trapped here could try and escape the port at the same time. That would provide us with enough of a distraction and the time we need for me to sprint back to your ship and lift off with you."

"And how is everyone supposed to know that their ships are about to be liberated?"

Her gaze flicked about, taking in the scores of patrons in the cantina with a sly look. "We'll spread the word beforehand, of course. Put the right words in the right ears, and it'll get around. These are your people; they'll listen to you."

He nearly guffawed at that. "Not likely. But enough of them might believe the rumor to act on it. At least cause enough of a fracas to keep the stormies busy." He scratched the stubble on his chin, considered his drink, and thought better of it, leaving it be. "It sounds like a plan. Though I'm a little unsure on your part...Tama always described you as resourceful, but she was referring to your prowess as a hunter. How're you going to get the tractor beams down? Never mind that, how're you going to even get into the control center? It's not like they leave the door open for anyone to walk in, you know."

"I have...skills that will assist me in my part of the plan. Let's just say, being a hunter, I have a certain appreciation and...aptitude for moving quickly and quietly. I _have_ to get in and out, because Tama is counting on me. She's counting on you, Pash."

Pash sighed heavily, then a fiercely determined look came to his eyes. "Alright...I can do this, as long as we understand each other. I will fly you to Nar Shaddaa. I'll even take the risk of landing there, and pointing you to the nearest slave market run by the Anjiliacs. But I can't promise anymore than that, Foyi. I don't want you to think I'm a coward, or that I don't care about Tama. But there are some places I just don't go, and situations I stay away from, and Nar Shaddaa fits both of those categories. And I've got debt collectors and some unsavory folks I have to stay ahead of, so I can't promise much past Nar Shaddaa."

Foyi sighed, though she nodded. "I understand...and you don't have to explain yourself to me. Getting me to Nar Shaddaa is all I ask." While part of her was disappointed that Pash was unwilling to assist her with the search for and eventual rescue of Tama, as she was certain she would need help at some point in her quest, especially considering her feet had never once left Yanibar's rugged ground, she also felt a momentary bout of relief. Despite Tama's glowing opinions of her "friend" Pash, Foyi had only truly met the man moments before. She could not say, even by a long shot, that she trusted him. Pash so far had not given her a reason to distrust him, but neither had he earned her trust. For now, they both had needs that the other could satisfy, and so a mutually-beneficial bargain had been struck. This thought reminded her of Lido, and she felt a sudden twinge of pain and regret, not to mention a profound shame. She shook it off and stood, bracing her palms on the table's greasy surface. "Do you need time to...reorient yourself, or can we get going?"

Pash stood quickly, swayed precariously, bracing his hand on the back of his seat. Foyi cocked a brow, and the smuggler held up an index finger, begging patience. He let out a tremendous belch, stood up straight, and said, "Alright. Let's do this. For Tama." He then began to lumber over to another table of spacers, and struck up a short but lively conversation conducted in conspiratorial whispers, and thus began his dissemination of the rumor they hoped would provide them a necessary distraction.

Foyi stalked to the door and lurked in the shadows beside it, watching as Pash went to work, using a combination of charm and camaraderie to make certain his message was heard. Fezzie, still positioned behind the bar, eyed both her and Pash making the rounds, a suspicious gleam in her dark eyes. Foyi ignored her and focused on the mission ahead. She found herself praying to whatever higher power existed to keep Tama safe, and she silently sent her thoughts and prayers across the void to her sister, hoping that somehow, somewhere, Tama would hear her.

 _I'm here, Tamam'buma. Stay alive. Stay strong. I'm coming for you._

* * *

Pash was walking more assuredly as they neared the docking bay that housed his ship. Foyi was walking behind him at a relatively safe distance, her hood obscuring her features, though her _lekku_ did drape from its folds. She was not taking any chances that the roving snowtrooper patrols might recognize her; she was unsure whether the last trooper she had killed at her former home had gotten a description of her to his superiors.

Pash stopped at the entrance to the bay which housed his ship, while Foyi slunk into the shadows cast by the overhang over the doorway. There were at least a dozen spacers milling about, more or less meandering toward their own ships, cautiously checking the perimeters and the sanctity of the Imperial lockdown. Looking for weaknesses. Waiting for the moment the Imperial attention waned and the tractor beams were shut down to make a break for their ships and escape the quarantine.

Pash peered through the door into the circular docking bay. His ship, the _Hopping Acklay_ , sat within on its landing struts, a Corellian Engineering Corporation HWK-290 with a paint job that may have once been blue but faded to an off-color gray. The ship had seen far better days, its hull so patched by plating that had been pulled from other vessels and scrap piles that it looked as if its design was a rudimentary attempt at urban camouflage. Pash grinned when he saw his vessel, but his smile slipped when he perceived the pair of stormtroopers milling about the docking bay. He leaned back, speaking to the Twi'lek in the shadows out of the corner of his mouth. "Looks like we have company."

Foyi started to take a look, thought better of it, and stepped back in the shadows. "Company? What kind?"

"Here's some hints. They wear white, have terrible senses of humor, and blasters for punchlines."

Foyi cursed under her breath. "Well, you need to get on your ship, so just bluff your way past them. You smugglers are good at that, aren't you?"

"You watch too many holos, kid."

"Never seen one."

Pash rolled his eyes. "Okay...you're fond of stereotypes then. Nice to know that I fit so well into your narrow-minded mold you've placed me in."

"We're wasting time," Foyi replied with a growl. "I have confidence that you can handle this. Now, which way to the customs building?"

Pash leaned around the corner and pointed to a large, roughly-pyramidal building on the edge of the spaceport, several streets down. "The control center will be on one of the upper floors in there. The place isn't very big, but there's bound to be a lot of Imps in there, so be careful."

She nodded and turned to make her way to the customs building, but Pash stopped her with a firm hand on her shoulder. She turned with a query and hostility in her gaze, which flicked down to Pash's other hand. He held a comlink before her, offering it. "Here. Take this. Contact me when you've got the tractor beams down."

She nodded again, snatched the comlink, and stuffed it into a pouch on her utility belt. Then she began moving toward the customs building in the distance at an easy, unassuming pace, keeping her head down and trying to stay close to walls and the sides of edifices. Pash watched her go for a moment to make certain no nearby stormtroopers decided to waylay her, then turned and walked through the doorway into the interior of the docking bay. He affected a stumbling stagger as he walked, acting far more drunk than he actually was, his mind racing through the different ploys and cons he could spin for the snowtroopers. As he emerged into the docking bay proper, he was immediately spotted by the pair of snowtroopers, who subsequently raised their weapons, but seeing his apparently incapacitated state, lowered them slightly.

Pash had nearly made it to the ramp of the _Hopping Acklay_ before the snowtroopers stepped directly in front of him, their weapons leveled at him. He opened his eyes wide, backpedaling quickly and awkwardly, as if he had noticed the Imperials for the first time. "Halt," called one of the stormtroopers, the one on the left, who was slightly taller than the one on the right. That was about where their dissimilarities ended.

"Oh, hey guysh," Pash slurred, offering an idiotic, toothy grin. "Wha's goin' on?"

"State your name and business here," said the stormtrooper on the right.

"Name's Passshhh. Passshhh," he repeated, as if in love with the sound of his own name. "This here's my sship, the _Hippity-Hoppity Ackshlay_..."

"The _Hopping Acklay_?" the one on the left suggested.

"Yeah! Like I shaid, hippity-hoppity. I need to get in there..." He began to walk forward again, but the stormtrooper on his right shoved him back with a hand on his chest.

"That ain't happening, sir. You need to step back, and go back to whatever watering hole you've been getting your swill from. This starport, and your ship, are on lockdown. No one goes to their ships, and no one's leaving."

Pash dropped a hand to his crotch and made a show of adjusting himself. "Tha's the problem, guysh. I don' need ta leave...I jes need my ointment."

"Ointment?"

He continued to scratch, hopefully making the stormtroopers progressively more uncomfortable. "Yeah, see, i's a long shtory, an' I'm in quite a lot o' pain here guysh, so if you coul' jes step aside an' let me through, I'd really appreciate it."

The stormtrooper on the left gestured at Pash's crotch with his blaster and said in a severe voice, "Maybe you should explain what it is you think you need on your ship."

Pash grunted, acting as if he were incredibly embarrassed, considering whether he actually wanted to tell the stormtroopers about his apparent affliction. He sighed, then spilled his story in a halting, self-conscious tone. "Okay, if ya have to know so bad...here's what happened. I met thish Zeltron girl, right? Hot as the twin suns o' Tatooine. No, hotter than that!"

"Zeltron, eh?" interrupted the one on the right. He was obviously interested now.

Pash nodded. "Tha's what I said. Anyway, I took one look at her, an' I was like, 'man, I have _got_ to get up her loading ramp', if you know wha' I'm saying."

The two stormtroopers chuckled, genuinely enjoying the story, which only encouraged Pash to continue. "So, I do just that. An' she was good, guysh. Everything they say about Zeltron women...ish all true. But after I left her, I found out she gave me something besides a good ride. An' now, if I don't put my ointment on every day, my 'asteroids' will shrivel up an' drop right out my pant legs. So, ya see guysh, I'm deshperate. I'd like to keep 'em right where they are, you know wha' I'm saying?"

Two helmeted heads swiveled to look at each other, then they both shrugged. "Why not?" said the one on the left.

"Can't let a guy go without his manhood," the one on the right agreed. "Here, come on, I'll escort you in."

Pash silently cursed in his head, but this was not unexpected. He affected his idiotic grin once more, and said, "Thanksh. I 'preciate thish, man."

"No problem," said the stormtrooper as he led the way up the ramp and into the interior of the ship. "Though you gotta tell me...was it worth it?"

Pash waited until they were fully obscured from the other stormtrooper's vision in the vessel's hold, and pulled his blaster from where he had concealed it under his coat. "Every second," he answered as he fired a blue stun blast into the trooper's armored back. The stormtrooper fell heavily to the deck without a yelp, his armor and falling weapon making a loud, clattering noise. Pash immediately ran back to the ramp and fired down its length before the other stormtrooper could even respond, the virtually noiseless stun blast striking him in the face and blowing him off his feet, where he landed flat on his back. Pash holstered his DH-17, and ran down to the bottom of the ramp, where he hooked his hands under the armpits of the second stormtrooper and breathing heavily and gasping with effort, lugged the limp form up into the hold of his ship. He activated the ramp's closing mechanism, and it began to shut as he made his way up to the cockpit. Pash plopped himself in the pilot chair, entering a flurry of commands on the control boards that had been heavily modified to allow a single person to operate most of the vessel's systems. He had done so because he had never met anyone who could stand his antics long enough to be a long-term copilot. He keyed in the _Hopping Acklay_ 's startup sequence, then leaned back in his chair, blowing out a shaking, nervous sigh. Now came the hard part. Now came the waiting.

* * *

Foyi reached the customs building's perimeter in only a few minutes, as the distance from Pash's docking bay was not far, and she had been fortunate enough to avoid the stormtroopers patrolling the intervening streets. Like most of the edifices on Yanibar, the building was constructed of large slabs of sturdy stone, with a flat roof and sloping walls that were wider at the bottom than they were where they met the roof. Sparse windows spotted the building's exterior, while a three-sided protrusion jutted from the front of the building, facing the row of docking bays at the spaceport. The protrusion was almost entirely made of glass, though Foyi could not see the interior of the balcony through the one-sided glass. _Must be the control center._

There were only three or four entrances that she could see, metal doors that had been reinforced with blast shielding. Each door had at least one stormtrooper posted in front of it, their blaster rifles crossing their chests, while other snowtroopers walked the perimeter in pairs or trios, their weapons also held at the ready. A Reconnaissance Troop Transporter hovered off to the side, currently without a pilot or guard, though its very presence was an unspoken threat, a taste of the mechanized, military might the small, understaffed Imperial garrison could supposedly bring down upon the heads of interlopers and dissidents.

Foyi remained beneath the overhang of a nearby shop and thus in the shadows, observing the attentiveness of the stationary guards, and the patterns of the patrolling ones. The doors were the obvious ways in, but they were watched too closely. The windows were another access point, but they were most likely wired to alarms, and besides, breaking them would draw too much attention to her entrance. She did not have the luxury of time to be spent bogged down in a firefight, and there appeared to be far too many stormtroopers to handle, even for a trained Zeison Sha Warrior such as herself. Her eyes were drawn to the roof's edge, her gaze moving up and down the walls, gauging the distance from the ground to the top of the structure. She guessed the top of the roof was about fifteen meters off the ground, a lengthy climb up sheer stone walls. This would require precise and concentrated use of the Force, and impeccable timing.

Foyi centered herself, taking in deep, relaxing breaths as she tentatively reached out to the Force. She imagined the waves of a crystal-clear ocean, stretching out before her as far as her mind's eye could see, the waves alternating between calm, cool currents, and the dark, sloshing ink in the distance beneath looming thunderheads. She grimaced as her attention was inevitably drawn to those darker waters, but she drug her consciousness from the looming Dark Side, and focused on the softer currents, the ones that were more familiar to her, the ones that gave her calm, peace, and determination.

Foyi began to walk from the shadows and out into the open, her hood up to continue shrouding her face, the wind whipping the hem of her cloak about her ankles with loud flapping noises. Immersed in the Force, she reached out with thin, concentrated streams, licking at the consciousnesses of the stormtroopers within sight. She was initiating and maintaining a Force-based illusion, a subtle altering of their perceptions such that they could and would be looking directly at her, but would forget her presence, her very existence, almost as soon as they registered it. Thus, she reached the wall of the customs building unmolested, and with a boost of speed, the Force providing her propulsion like the sublight drives of a starship, she scrambled up the sloping, completely sheer wall of the building, her hands and feet sticking to the stone unnaturally as she propelled herself upward. In seconds, she crested the roof, vaulting over the short wall that surrounded its flat surface, dropping into a crouch, keeping a profile low enough that she could not be seen from the ground. The roof stretched out before her, its surface covered in thin drifts of snow, the stone crusted over with ice. The rectangular air circulation and purification devices bolted into the roof's flat surface accompanied a rudimentary suite of long-range and deepspace telemetric antennae as the only features on the roof. She reached behind her to the holster concealed by her cloak on her back, extracting the discblade kept there. She breathed a sigh of relief as the familiar weight and contours of the weapon seemed to mold to her palm.

Foyi scurried across the roof, looking for an access point. She was rewarded by a rectangular grate, which was fastened closed by an uncomplicated but heavy-duty lock. A simple application of the Force popped the lock and swung the grate open, revealing a dark, rectangular space below. She dropped in lightly, finding herself in a thin, cramped tunnel that extended into the darkness both before and behind her. Above her and a little to the left, directly under the machinery on the roof, was a large fan slowly spinning. The air flowing through the tunnel was dusty, musky, and cool. Foyi had found herself in the air circulation system of the customs building.

Foyi began crawling through the shafts on her belly and elbows, clutching the discblade in her right hand as she shuffled forward. The vents were a labyrinth of thin metal and sharp corners, providing no hint as to where she should move or in what direction she should crawl. So she relied on the Force more than her sight, letting her intuition, her feelings, her instincts guiding her as she moved carefully but as quickly as possible. She began to come across other grates beneath her, looking down into rooms full of furniture, records, or Imperial personnel beneath her stomach. She moved with special caution as she passed these grates, not wishing to alert any of the Imperials below that there was something crawling about their airshafts that had no business being there.

Finally, she came to a grate that simply felt _right_. She peered through the tiny slats in the metal, and saw a semi-trapedzoidal room below her, where three of the walls were almost completely dominated by expansive windows. Control boards and terminals were arrayed before these windows, and a few rolling chairs sat before those. As far as she could see and sense, there were only three people in the room below her, two officers in olive grey uniforms, both human males, one with dark skin and a shaved head, the other lighter-skinned, with fiery hair and long sideburns. Off in the corner of the room stood a snowtrooper whose armor was structurally identical to that of the others she had seen, but the aesthetics were fundamentally different. There were blue markings and stripes on various portions of his armor, including the chestpiece, shoulder pads, and helmet. He held a DLT-20A Longblaster with a confidence and familiarity that revealed the experience he had with the weapon. The very way he held himself, standing straight, tall, and proud, though loose enough to drop into a more aggressive stance if necessary, silently spoke of his experience and lethality, his confidence and the commanding presence he exuded. She did not recognize this type of Imperial soldier, but just the palpable feeling of cold, calculated efficiency and deadly malevolence she was experiencing from his vicinity told her that this stormtrooper was not like his fellows, and would not go down easily in a fight.

Foyi's eyes strained to see details through the tiny slits in the grate, attempting to locate the particular set of controls that operated the docking bays' tractor beams. She saw a lever that looked promising, and leaned forward, practically pressing her face into the metal in order to get a closer look.

There was a squeal of metal as the bolts that held the grate in place gave way under weight they were never intended to support. Before Foyi even realized it, she was falling headfirst into the control room, tumbling with a quick curse as she and the grate crashed to the floor with a cacophony of noise. Foyi looked up in alarm and fear, into the shocked gazes of the two officers, and the ready blaster barrel of the specialist stormtrooper. The light-skinned officer was the first to speak, opening his mouth to utter, "What the-?"

There was no time for subtlety, for secrecy. Foyi raised her hand and emitted a massive eruption of the Force, throwing both officers off their feet. The dark-skinned human sprawled across the control panel before rolling off of it and striking the floor with a heavy _thud_. The red-haired one went bodily through the air and slammed into the wall hard enough for her to hear his breath leave his lungs in an audible gasp. Even as she completed this maneuver, she was already rolling to the side as the stripe-armored stormtrooper discharged his longblaster, and a burning streak of laser flashed across the space, searing a hole through the grate that had struck the floor and was trapped beneath her weight. Her discblade left her hand merely by thought and spun in a curving, vertical arc toward the stormtrooper, but he was also rolling, backward and away from the spinning weapon. He came to one knee, clutching the pistol grip of his DLT-20A in one hand as his other snaked to an unrecognizable device on his belt. Foyi had to mentally adjust the trajectory of her weapon to accommodate for her opponent's change in position, but the discblade bounced off a rippling bubble of force that suddenly projected itself around the stormtrooper. It was a personal shield of some sort, technology she had only heard of in legends from the time of the Old Republic and never thought she would actually witness.

The discblade returned to her hand even as the stormtrooper shifted his aim and fired again. Only instead of a blaster bolt speeding her way, a concentrated blast of blue light, a cone of stunning force she had never seen before sped toward her. She gave herself completely to the Force, her back arching as her upper spine became nearly parallel with the floor; the stun blast passed within centimeters of the tip of her nose and impacted the windows above the control panels with a shower of sparks. She continued the acrobatic motion in a backflip that landed her atop the consoles, releasing her discblade once more, letting it curve through the air to strike at the bald officer, the weapon burying itself in his chest even as he began to regain his feet. The man let out a gasp, his blaster pistol half unsheathed falling to the floor, his blood spraying across his crisp uniform as she telekinetically ripped the weapon free of his flesh. She spun as more blaster fire came her way, from both the stormtrooper and the red-haired officer, who was still gasping for air but had composure enough to fire wildly at her from his knees. The discblade slapped into her palm in time to deflect a blaster shot from the stormtrooper, and she cartwheeled off of the console. Midair, she dived deep into the Force, calling on its power, its all-knowing nature, gaining brief insights into what actions her enemies would take in the next, critical seconds. Even as she landed on the balls of her feet, Foyi saw the stormtrooper's blaster bolt shrieking toward her chest seconds before he fired, and she released the discblade once more, as if it had been straining to fly from her hand and she was merely allowing it. The stormtooper fired, and the discblade curved upward, the blade intercepting the laser at an angle, the Force-imbued metal deflecting the lethal energy to the side, where it impacted the red-haired officer's sternum. He gave a squawk of surprise and denial, then slumped against the wall, his failing muscles still attempting to depress the trigger for his sidearm.

Foyi let the discblade fall to the floor as she shifted her telekinetic focus upon the stormtrooper himself, the personal shield offering him no protection from the power of the Force. As if she were wielding a giant, invisible hand, she plucked the stormtrooper off his feet, where he yelped in surprise as he flailed in midair, still stubbornly holding onto his longblaster. With all the will and force she could muster, Foyi bodily slammed the stormtrooper into the far wall, which formed a crater as his bubble shield depressed into it, then shut down under the strain. The stormtrooper hit the wall hard, but not with bone-crushing force as she had intended, for his shield had softened most of the impact. Even as he dropped to the floor, Foyi was already sprinting across the intervening space, scooping up her discblade as she did so and bringing it to bear in an overhand chop meant to split the stormtrooper's helmet. But his forearm came up and blocked the strike, while he swung his longblaster like a club directly into her groin. Her armor softened most of the blow, but she still felt ill and woozy as some of the impact radiated through her guts and even into her chest, and she staggered back from her opponent in a daze. This particular stormtrooper was well-trained in close quarters combat, and his next strike was a chop to her clavicle, which, while somewhat mitigated by her protective armor, sent her gasping to her knees.

The stormtrooper brought his longblaster to bear, the barrel hovering before her face. In fear for her life, but more importantly, what might happen to Tama if her life ended here, she reached deep within herself and the Force. Her hand shot up, and the stormtrooper suddenly went vertical, slamming into the ceiling hard enough to put a dent in both the ceiling and his helmet. Her other hand, clutching the discblade, came up even as the stormtrooper's limp form surrendered to gravity once more, and her weapon was positioned so that his thinly-armored throat drug along the blade as he fell at her feet. He gasped and convulsed for a few seconds as his lifeblood squirted from severed jugulars, and finally settled into the cold embrace of death.

After a shaking inhalation, Foyi struggled to her feet once again, hobbling over to the consoles and terminals before the windows, pain coursing through her body from the wounds and physical strikes suffered from the unusual stormtrooper. She had half-expected the building's halls to already be screaming with alarms, considering the absolutely botched stealth attempt on her part, but a quick examination of the terminals, which had suffered only minor damage in the fight, revealed the controls for the alarm system. No one had gotten a chance to activate them, so there were no alarms. However, the sounds of blasterfire and her Force shoves had not gone unnoticed, judging by the sounds of shouts and running, booted feet she could hear through the doors to either side of the room. She had little time before this control center would be overrun with Imperial troops.

Foyi jogged back to the stormtrooper's corpse and scooped up his DLT-20A; it was considerably heavier than the E-11, but far better balanced and more accurate. She discharged a single shot into the control panel of each door, fusing the electronics within and keeping the doors sealed. She did so in just the right amount of time, for as soon as she fused the panels, there were bodies slamming into the doors from the other side, accompanied by dimly-heard shouts ordering her to open the doors. Foyi slung the longblaster across her back and jogged back to the consoles, her eyes roving over the readouts, screens, buttons, and dials, until she identified the lever again. Quickly reading the Aurebesh lettering beside the lever, she confirmed that this was the shut-off switch for the tractor beam generators, assuming she slaved all the generators to the lever. Otherwise, she would have to engage and disengage the lever for each and every one of the tractor beams in the spaceport, and considering she knew not the numbering system the Imperials used to designate which tractor beams corresponded to which docking bay, she had no time to handle the situation in such a way. Her hands flew across the keys, and she watched as lights blinked green beside each one of the tractor beam controls, indicating that the lever would work for all of them. Once all the necessary lights had blinked into existence, she pulled the lever without hesitation and watched as a cascade of red replaced the green.

The banging outside the doors had ceased, which meant the troopers outside were resorting to methods other than brute force to gain entrance. This probably meant E-Webs or breaching charges, which meant that she probably had seconds before the doors were blown out of their recesses or melted to slag. She found the communications interface, and opened a channel to the loudspeakers placed all around the spaceport, so that her voice could be heard by all those within a half-kilometer of the docking bays. "Attention all pilots and visitors to Yanibar. Your friendly neighborhood Imperial occupation force would like to inform you that the lockdown has been lifted, and you are all free to depart at your leisure. Thank you all for your patience, and have a great day." She switched off the interface, then stepped back from the consoles and unslung her longblaster from her shoulder, discharging a trio of shots into the computers and sophisticated electronics, melting them into slag with an eruption of sparks and errant electricity. She shifted her aim upward and fire another few shots through the centermost window of the balcony, and without a moment's hesitation, leapt through the open space and into the windy, bone-chilling air beyond.

Foyi twisted in midair, flipping over to land solidly on the ground, upright. Her knees bent at the impact, sending shocks through her body that agitated her wounds and bruises, and she could not help but stumble forward in the snow. She sprang to her feet, swiping at the ice and snow on her face with one hand while clutching the weapon in her other, sprinting forward, toward the rows of docking bays and her only way offworld. She ignored the nearby stormtrooper guards and patrols who were shocked to see an armored Twi'lek girl survive a twelve meter drop to the ground and take off running. Blaster bolts stitched the snow and ice around her feet, whizzing past her shoulders and head, impacting the stone walls of the nearest docking bay.

Foyi rounded the curve of the nearest wall and into the spaceport proper, which had become a free-for-all of alien beings running hither and thither, despite the patrols' attempts to contain and restrain them. She could already hear the heavy rumblings like earthquakes or thunder as the engines of multiple starships began spooling up. Even a few starships were already lifting off, their pilots determining that a cold start and race for the upper atmosphere were worth the risks if it meant escape from the Imperial lockdown. Foyi used the crowds and general pandemonium to cover her own escape, becoming just another face in the crowd, pushing and shoving through those who got in her way. A stormtrooper sergeant saw her, saw the weapons she carried, and pointed her out to his squad. Lasers streaked through the masses, eliciting screams as beings dropped to the snow, either from blaster burns or in an effort to evade the Imperials' indiscriminate fire. Foyi dodged behind a stack of crates, still a quarter kilometer from her destination. Lasers burned into the crates on the opposite side, or flew over her position of cover harmlessly.

She let out a primal growl of rage, felt the dark, hot, boiling waters of the Force coursing through her veins. She had no time for this. _Tama_ had no time for this.

Her comlink pinged, and she frantically dug it from her pouch, palming the activation stud. "Not a great time, Pash!" As if to accentuate her point, a laser blast flew perilously close over her head, impacting the outer wall of the docking bay behind her with a shower of hot, stone shards.

"Where are you? The _Acklay_ 's prepped and hot, but if we don't leave in the next minute or so, this bay's gonna fill with stormies, and we won't be going anywhere anytime fast!"

Foyi raised her blaster over the top edge of the crate before her and fired randomly, letting sound and instinct guide her shots, hoping she hit at least one of the stormtroopers keeping her pinned down. "I'm stuck; the Imps have me trapped behind a pile of crates two docking bays down! I can't move without getting shot!"

"Alright, just stay put, and keep your _lekku_ on! I'm going to do something really stupid, and you better be ready for it!"

Foyi grimaced as another few laser blasts stitched the sides of the crate beside her and blew away molten streams of metal slag in the snow, where they sizzled as the ice crystals evaporated rapidly. "What are you doing? Pash? Pash?!" But the channel had closed, the line dead. She was on her own again.

Foyi cursed the Empire, smugglers, and the galaxy in general as she went upright enough to peer over the nearest crate, bracing her DLT-20A on the crate's top and firing her shots carefully. The stormtrooper squad had arranged themselves across the street, using parked and crashed vehicles for cover, keeping up a steady stream of fire to keep her contained as a few of their fellows circled around, trying to gain flanking positions on her. Foyi shifted her aim and put a laser bolt through one of the flanking troopers' guts, sending him sprawling. Her aim shifted in a lightning fast maneuver to bring her sights upon another flanking stormtrooper, whom she downed with a shot to the leg. He cried out and fell forward in the snow, crumpling around his injured limb.

Foyi dropped back down behind the crate as nearly a dozen laser bolts converged on the spot her head had been visible from only seconds before. The lasers failed to hit her due to her quick reactions, but she could feel the heat radiating off the crate as it sustained more fire. She could not remain here long if she hoped to maintain cover from the Imperial troops. She settled in the Force again, letting it fill her up like a liquid being poured into a vessel, preparing for a burst of speed, or power, or something, anything, to help her escape...or destroy her enemies.

But her concentration was interrupted by the sound of a starship lifting off, not far from her position, the vibrations caused by its sound waves felt in her teeth and hammering through her _lekku_. She glanced down at the docking bay where Pash was, and saw the ugly, angular nose of the _Hopping Acklay_ emerging from the open-air roof of the docking bay and rocketing into the air. It streaked up through the gray sky and the whirling snow, hooking around in a wide arc that circled most of the spaceport, then tipped its nose downward and screamed toward the street where the firefight was taking place. It sounded and felt like the sky itself was falling on her head as the ship screamed down the street, coming to a sudden halt midair, hovering mere meters above the ground between her and the stormtroopers. The Imperials' blastershots slowed only a moment as they readjusted their aim and began scouring the beaten and rusted hull plating with blaster burns, though their small-arms fire had little effect. From the underside of the ship opened the boarding ramp, squealing as its space cracked wide like the maw of some great, growling beast.

Foyi needed no other invitation. She vaulted over the crates and sprinted as quickly as her aching lungs, burning legs, and pounding wounds would allow. Some of the stormtroopers noticed her making a break for the boarding ramp and shifted their aim. But they were too late, for Foyi threw herself on the cool, hard metal of the ramp, rolling up it slightly and yelling raggedly, "Go!"

She was unsure if Pash would be able to hear her, but she had projected the plea for haste as much through the Force as she had with her voice, and if Pash had not heard her verbal yell, he would have felt the sudden urgency she aimed at him. The space between the ramp and the ship's hull closed quickly, though the environment outside blurred in rapid motion as Pash punched the ship forward and upward before the boarding ramp had even closed. She stumbled upright even as turbulence rocked the ship, the _Acklay_ swinging from side to side, juking back and forth as rumbles shivered through its interior. She scurried as quickly as she could to the cockpit of the vessel, to find Pash strapped in the pilot's seat, sweat streaming down his face as he wrestled with the controls. Through the forward viewports could be seen the rapidly-darkening sky, lit briefly by brilliant green flashes and explosions all around them.

The ship's sudden lurch to starboard threw Foyi off balance, and she tumbled into the copilot's seat in a sideways position. Pash barely spared her a glance, his hand flying over the controls as klaxons reverberated within the cockpit. Foyi grunted as she tried to gain an upright position in the seat while struggling with the tangled crash harness. "What the hell's going on?"

"Turns out the Empire doesn't like its guests leaving the party early," Pash bit through gritted teeth. "They're firing their turbolasers at us, and the gunners have kept their skills sharp." The ship rocked from an explosion off the port side, and Pash gave a little yelp of fear as he lost brief control of his ship and it began to dip back deeper into the atmosphere.

Foyi forced herself to close her eyes, attempting to adopt a a meditative stance and calming composure. She tried to reach out to the Force, to find her center of peace, of serenity, but she was finding it too demanding to concentrate on not regurgitating her last meal. The _Acklay_ bucked and wriggled midair again, and there was another explosion so close that she felt she could feel the latent energy and burning ozone in her nose and teeth. She merely gritted her teeth, her fingers digging furrows into the armrests of her seat, and determined to ride it out, as there was truly little she could do in this situation.

There came the roughest and most jarring patch of turbulence yet which was sustained for a long, agonizing moment. And then, there was peace again, as the feeling of explosions and the ship fighting Pash's commands stilled, and the _Acklay_ flew unhindered, smooth and straight. She dared opened her eyes, and could not suppress a gasp. Outside the viewports was an expansive, all-encompassing darkness that stretched as far as she could see, the darkness' sovereignty and composition broken only by the thousands upon thousands of burning white lights in its expanse. She had seen the stars multiple times on the coldest and clear nights of the Yanibarran winter, but the feeling of insignificance in the face of the galaxy was nothing compared to what she was experiencing at the moment. The stars stretched out forever and beyond, the majority of their lights twinkling, undulating pinpoints of white, interspersed with more hazy, solid balls of reds, blues, browns, and greens, planets far from her and suddenly within her reach, planets full of millions of beings and fantastic technologies. Planets that she never expected to see with her own eyes, and though at thousands and millions of lightyears, she could make out no distinguishing characteristics of these mysterious worlds, she could still see them with her very own eyes.

Foyi turned to Pash, her mouth agape, her eyes wide as an Initiate's. Pash could not suppress a rakish grin, though his attention was focused on the controls for the navicomputer. "Pretty, ain't it?"

Foyi nodded, still overwhelmed. Pash continued. "Yeah, gets me everytime, too. I love coming up here, just being among the stars, going from place to place, world to world, no responsibilities, nothing to tie me down. Unfortunately, we can't stare all Hutt-eyed at it for long; if the Imps have any attack vessels on the planet below, they'll be sending 'em up here right now. We need to be in hyperspace before they show up to give us our parting gifts." He continued to input coordinates, then sat back, letting the navicomputer calculate the safest jump from Yanibar to their destination.

Foyi leaned forward, her eyes scrutinizing the solid lights that denoted planets and more solid celestial bodies than the vast fusion and fission reactions of stars. "Can...can we see Nar Shaddaa from here?"

Pash also leaned forward, peering out at the stars before gesturing toward a somewhat denser cluster of lights near the starboard side of the vessel. She traced the direction indicated by his gesturing digit, an invisible line that connected his finger to a slightly grayish-ochre star in the center of the cluster. "I think...I think that's it...that star cluster should be the Y'Toub system. Actually, Nar Shaddaa is a moon of Nal Hutta, so that star is more likely the latter rather than the former, but that should be about where it is. Where we're going...let's just hope your sister is actually there, and...okay."

Foyi's fascination with space and her new experience dimmed as her thoughts turned to Tama once more, and the overwhelming feelings of fear and terror she must be experiencing. Her hand came up to pinch the tiny light of Nal Hutta between her index finger and thumb. She reached out through the Force, imagining her thoughts traveling the vast distances of space and time, her spirit of comfort and encouragement reaching out like an endless ripple on the surface of an incomprehensible ocean, searching for her sister. _Tama. Hold on. I'm coming_.

The navicomputer pinged, and Pash placed his hand on the lever above it. He cast her a glance, his expression a mixture of excitement and concern. "You ready?"

Foyi merely nodded, her _lekku_ sliding about her neck and arranging themselves around her shoulders. Pash turned to the handle, and pulled it downward; the stars outside blurred and elongated into white lines that stretched on into eternity, and the _Hopping Acklay_ made the jump to the scintillating blues and whites of hyperspace, onward to Nar Shaddaa.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The journey through hyperspace and onto Nar Shaddaa was a relatively uneventful one, where Foyi spent some time cleaning up the best she could with the few hygienics she had brought in her satchel and the startlingly sparse selection aboard the _Hopping Acklay_. She also took a few hours to descend into a meditative trance, which sped the healing of most of her wounds, and refreshed her exhausted mind and body to a small extent. She was far too anxious and restless to surrender to sleep completely, so the restorative trances would have to be enough.

Foyi and Pash also spent some time in the cramped ship's galley talking, making plans, and generally getting to know each other better. Foyi was present when Pash contacted his most recent employer on his holoprojector, a large Whiphid female who was a purveyor and connoisseur of sweets and pastries the galaxy over. She ran a small but lucrative shop on the Wheel, and it had been Pash's job to deliver a sizable shipment of such goods to her almost a week ago. She was livid upon being informed that her delicacies would be delayed even further, and not only told Pash in certain and colorful terms that their deal was finished, she went so far as to command him never to contact her again. When the Whiphid's portly frame disappeared from the projector, Pash sat back, blew an angry exhalation, then announced that Foyi could eat whatever sweets she wanted to out of the cargo hold. "After all, now I gotta get rid of it somehow," he explained.

Toward the end of their trip, they shared several sweesonberry rolls, sticky candies, and muja fruit pie, and the comfort food did serve to take Foyi's mind off her troubles, at least for a few minutes. Pash was pleasant enough company as well, always ready with a joke or a witty wisecrack, though he also had a sense of timing and sensitivity that stopped him from going too far with his odd sense of humor. And it was obvious that he genuinely cared about the safety and well-being of Tama. Despite this, when asked, he did reiterate his intention to remain on Nar Shaddaa long enough to let her off and leave for the stars, to stay ahead of whoever it was he considered his enemies, and to stay away from the Hutts. As they approached the Smugglers' Moon, she realized that she would miss Pash's presence and his capabilities, and a small part of her wished he would remain, to help her rescue Tama from the Anjiliacs. But she realized that he feared the Hutts and their slavers, a fear that was probably born of far more information and familiarity with the ways of the Hutt Cartels than she would ever have, and therefore she assumed his fear was rational and justified. She knew that she would soon find herself in over her head, though she felt no choice in the matter. Tama was everything she had, everything she cared about in the universe, and she was not going to let anything happen to her.

When Pash brought them out of hyperspace over the world below, Foyi could not help but gasp at her first glimpse of Nar Shaddaa. In the light of the far off sun, the planet glowed a dusky orange in color, its dark landmasses barely distinguishable from the staggering multitude of lights and power grids visible from space. If she understood its appearance correctly, it seemed to be covered almost entirely with cityscape, an ecumenoppolis that extended over the entire planet, like the stories she had heard of Imperial Center, so far away in the Core. In the distance, highlighted and silhouetted against the mass of the moon below, were multiple space stations, opulent skyhooks, and more starships than she could count, almost as numerous as the stars themselves. As they drew closer and Nar Shaddaa grew to fill the entire viewports, she began to perceive details and specifics of those vessels and structures in orbit.

"See those nearby skyhooks?" Pash remarked with a nervous tremor, but still acting very much the tour guide. "Some of 'em are owned by the various _kajidics_ and cartels, a few by Vigos of the Black Sun. Gives them a sense of superiority over everyone else, and a show of the power they can wield, here and across the galaxy. This is probably one of the most dangerous worlds you'll ever visit, Foyi. There are virtually no laws here. Whatever sense of order and organization you find down there is controlled by the Hutts, or Black Sun, or any other criminal empire that has a significant presence here. Even the Empire doesn't mess with this place too much; they used to have some shipyards here in orbit. Some sort of TIE Fighter construction facility or something, though it fell out of the sky two years ago and landed in the city below, wiping out several levels and killing hundreds. I think there are still some people or droids cleaning that stuff up, though there are no organized efforts to do so. Ever since then, the Empire has given this moon a wide berth, and mostly let the crimelords run the show like they have for eons."

Foyi stared at him, intrigued by his story. "What caused the shipyards to crash on the planet?"

Pash shrugged. "I don't know if anyone really knows for sure, though everyone's got theories and rumors. My favorite is that a Jedi general, returned from the dead, led a rebel militia to take over the facility, and crashed it into the planet to show the Empire what's what. Others say that that same Jedi was attacked by one of Vader's agents, or Vader himself, and their fight was so cataclysmic, it caused the shipyards to crash." He smirked. "I've even heard some rumors that the Jedi survived somehow, and is even now working with the Rebels. They're nice stories, anyway, but the Jedi are long gone from the galaxy."

Foyi felt a twinge of annoyance at the mention of the Jedi, murmuring, "Good." Nar Shaddaa rushed up toward them, the ship plunging through the greasy, turbulent atmosphere of the moon. Vile moisture streaked across the viewports, while towers of staggering size rose from the smoggy morass below. There were skyscrapers, composed of thousands of levels and kilometers upon kilometers high, soaring above vertical expanses of cityscape built haphazardly upon the levels below them. Refueling spires and sprawling loading docks dotted the landscape. Bridges, skywalks, and transit tubes connected asymmetrically placed and constructed buildings. Airspeeders and starships whizzed between different sections of the city or carved paths through the air in the depthless canyons between the larger conglomerations of congested city. There were lights everywhere, and the metal surfaces of the buildings were tarnished and smeared with the detritus and erosion of millennia of careless and desperate living by countless sentient beings. It was both wondrous and terrible to behold, and her eyes ached simply trying to take in as many details as she possibly could.

Pash wheeled the _Hopping Acklay_ around in a wide arc, spiraling down to a landing platform that was a large, octagonal pad extending out into open space from the side of a stacked city block. He activated the landing sequence as the ship hovered over the platform and slowly lowered, cutting off a battle-scarred Ghtroc 720 Light Freighter, the pilot of which had had his eyes on the same landing space. The _Acklay_ settled safely on the platform, a metallic squeal heard as one of the landing struts crushed the remains of a discarded protocol droid someone had left in the middle of the platform. Pash finalized the landing sequence by flipping a few switches, and turned to the Twi'lek beside him, a nervous expression on his face. "Well, kid...here we are. Nar Shaddaa."

Foyi sat staring out the viewports, completely lost, unable to comprehend where she might even begin to start in her search and rescue attempt. "Thanks," she murmured.

Pash pointed ahead through the viewports, indicating the bridge that connected the city towers to the free-standing platform. "If you follow this walkway, you'll find yourself on a strip of bars, cantinas, and...other places. There's a tavern the Anjiliac thugs frequent a few stores down, called Baruk's Bar. It's a pretty rough place, and it's owned by another smalltime crimelord by the name of Reelo Baruk, but they give each other their space 'cause they have an 'understanding'. See, Baruk runs a trash collection and disposal business, and the Anjiliacs, when they're feeling pressure from the other _kajidics_ who want to cut into their business, sometimes use Baruk's business to smuggle high value materials. That includes slaves. Otherwise, their respective thugs enjoy betting on the fights in the ring, or getting into fights between themselves. If you're going to find any information out about the Anjiliacs' current slaving activities, Baruk's would be a good place to start. But watch your step, and be careful who you talk to." Foyi was a bout to protest, but Pash held up a hand. "And I know you can handle yourself: you proved that when you got in and out of that customs building without being killed. I'm just warning you. Be careful out there. You must be aware and vigilant every second you are on Nar Shaddaa. Don't drink anything you haven't watched someone prepare, don't buy any spice off the street, keep both eyes on your credit chip, and don't fall asleep in an alley. Oh, and never, on any circumstances, accept a gift from anyone. Period."

Foyi nodded to all his cautions and warnings. She stood, shouldering her bag, but paused before picking up her blasters, as her discblade was still strapped securely to her back. "What about my guns?"

"Oh, _definitely_ take those with you, and wear them openly. The fact that you're carrying military arms usually only found in the hands of stormtroopers will make a lot of small time thugs and muggers think twice about messing with you. Just be aware that the professionals won't be deterred whatsoever."

Foyi nodded again, then slung the two blasters across her back and walked to the ramp, which had already lowered to the permacrete landing pad below. She paused at the top of the ramp, looking over her shoulder at the human, who stood awkwardly by the door. Foyi dipped her head in respect and gratitude. "I...thank you, Pash. I'm not sure what the path before me holds, but I know I never would have gotten this far without you."

Pash chortled. "Yeah, somehow I doubt that. You're a lot more capable than you believe, Foyi, and Tama should be glad to have such a devoted and skilled sister looking out for her. You just focus on finding her, and you'll...you'll be fine. I know it."

"Baruk's Bar, then?" she asked for clarification.

Pash nodded. "Yeah, that's the one."

Foyi began to walk down the ramp, her weapons and bag swaying on her back behind her. The miasma of smells that composed Nar Shaddaa's poor air quality assaulted her like a humid, sticky slap to the face. She could smell burning spice, moldering machinery and decaying flesh, urine and feces, the hot tang of recently-spilled blood, starship grease and the chemical scent of burning ozone. It was rancid, and she could not help but cough and splutter for a moment as her olfactory senses attempted to process and accommodate the amalgamation of differing smells. She continued her descent, but was stopped at the base of the ramp by Pash's voice, calling out to her back, "Hey, Foyi?"

She turned to look up at him. "Yeah?"

"For what it's worth: Good luck. You're gonna need it."

She smirked sadly. "May the Force be with you, Pash."

A minute later, Foyi watched as the _Hopping Acklay_ lifted off the platform and spiraled up into the sky, disappearing in the thick cloud cover and dark, roiling smog with a distant rumble drowned out by the comings and goings of thousands of other nearby vessels and vehicles. Foyi felt alone again, the same emotion of impending despair and hopelessness she had experienced when she had watched the Anjiliac ship take her sister away. She reached out to the Force, and instantly recoiled, as if she had dipped her hand into a pool of liquid she expected to be crystal-clear water, but instead found it to be a vat of overused cooking grease. The Force felt raw, chaotic, and diseased here, as if the inhabitants of this planet only called upon its dark aspects with their equally vile deeds. It was oppressive, cloying, and suffocating. She breathed slowly, in and out, practicing the meditative, centering exercises of the Zeison Sha, struggling to regain and maintain her inner balance. And after a moment, she found it, the calm at the center of her existence, the peace she sought now more than ever. It was small, buried in the dark waters, but it still lay deep within her, shining like a distant star in the void. Even here, even with so much pain, corruption, and darkness, the Force was in her, and she was a fundamental part of it. Renewed and invigorated, she strode across the grimy, stained bridge to the wide, unprotected walkway that encircled this particular collection of towers and randomly stacked buildings looming above her. The walkway had no railings, so the edge of the metal platform merely dropped off into the smoky abyss below. Starships and airspeeders screamed past or overhead, some close enough that their proximity threatened the pedestrians on the skywalk. Foyi doubted the pilots would lose little sleep if they happened to knock a few of those pedestrians off their feet and into the depths below. She passed a multitude of beings, belonging both to species she recognized as well as ones she could not name, many of them walking, a few flying speeder bikes and swoops down the center of the walking area. Some crouched in alleys, their sullen eyes taking in passerby or huddling together over some sort of illicit activity. Others lounged against the walls, languishing in drunken stupors or begging those who passed for spare credits or scraps of food. Foyi made certain to not focus on any one being for too long, and she never met anyone's gaze. She expected some sort of fight with the Anjiliacs, but she did not want to be stalled by a random passerby because she had looked at them wrong.

She only had to pass seven taverns and two houses of ill repute before she came upon a mostly abandoned section of the block, where very few establishments resided amongst a labyrinthine collection of open-air catwalks and dim lights. Along a tall, unmarked wall, near another edge falling down into the dazzling depths, was a single door, also unmarked. She stared at the door, standing a few meters away from it, wondering if this was the entrance to Baruk's Bar, as she had so far not come across any establishments that matched the description or identified themselves as such. As she watched, a pair of Rodians came around the far corner, chatting in lively Rodese, dressed in jackets and light combat armor, blaster pistols strapped to their thighs and encased in holsters beneath their arms. If they took notice of the Twi'lek standing in the shadows, looking for all the stars like a lost anooba pup, they did not react, angling for the door, which opened at their approach. She watched it slide shut, and waited a few moments, but there were no others walking through the entrance.

Foyi steeled herself and tried to appear confident, like she belonged here, and that walking into a bar built almost exclusively for Reelo Baruk's thugs was something she did almost every day. The door opened at her approach with a slight squeal of rusting metal, and she walked into a large, open common room with dark décor and dim lights. The bar was in the rough center of the room, enclosed in a cylindrical structure that stretched from floor to high ceiling. On the far end, on the uppermost level, a row of windows loomed down upon the bar's patrons; it appeared to be some sort of security office, though she could not see through the glass from her vantage point. The floor was interspersed with low tables and infrequent chairs, and the bar did not even have the luxury of seats or stools arrayed around its counter. In a nearby corner, there was a pit in the floor, around which several patrons stood, yelling, cheering, or groaning, passing credits between hands almost faster than she could follow. The bar was not overcrowded, and soft, unassuming music played in the background.

Almost as soon as she stepped through the door, she was greeted by a Gran and a Rodian, both of which were openly carrying weapons, though they had not quite pointed them in her direction. The Gran spoke first, his trio of eyes twitching slightly as he spoke something in a guttural, harsh language she did not recognize. She gave him a confused gaze, which turned to the Rodian when he translated, his own words heavily accented and difficult to understand, but at least they were in Basic. "Leave your weapons with us. You'll get them back upon your departure."

Foyi considered briefly resisting, hanging onto her weapons and trying to force her way into the bar. But a quick visual scan of the room revealed no one else in the bar had any visible weapons upon their persons. Perhaps these were simply the house rules, and if that was so, she thought it best not to go against them for now. At least, until she could find out more information regarding the whereabouts of the Anjiliacs. And her sister. The Gran gestured toward a box beside the door, and she unslung her blaster rifles, propping them upright within the box's confines. She then pulled her satchel from her back, and with a moment's hesitation, dropped it in as well. Her discblade, which was hidden in the sheathe on her back beneath her cloak, remained where it was. No reason to advertise her most prized possession until she needed it. The Gran and Rodian both scrutinized her for a moment as she spread her arms, indicating that she possessed no more weapons. After a tense moment, the two beings stepped aside, and let her walk unimpeded into the recesses of the bar.

As she walked, her eyes scanned the composition of the patrons huddled around tables, cards, and drinks. There were a large number of Rodians and Gran on one side of the room, while the other mostly consisted of Houk and Weequay. Other species were represented as well, including a few humans, one of which was a dark-skinned man with thinning black hair, who winked at her lasciviously as she passed. In one corner of the bar was a collection of Aleena chattering with each other and chortling loudly. Sauntering across the room and draping herself across the shoulder of an Ithorian was a Zeltron female, all curves and lithe lines, her smile white and brilliant in her scarlet face. On the far end of the room, near a doorway that led to a set of guarded stairs, a truly alarming and strange being watched the crowd burning, crimson eyes glowing from a helmet that looked almost like the head of a droid. The being's body was sheathed in various types of armor, a body made of differing colors and textures of skin and muscle, what few areas were not covered by the gray-silver plating. His left arm was the battered appendage from a Trandoshan, affixed to a shoulder containing a large slugthrower by a tangle of calcified tubes or tentacles. The strange, foreboding alien's vile gaze regarded her for a moment, then his head swiveled weirdly as he looked away and focused on someone or something else in the room.

Foyi continued her trek to the bar and leaned against the counter, her eyes only fleetingly glancing at the rather impressive selection of drinks offered. But her gaze was drawn and fixed upon the bartender, who was a member of a species she had never seen before, and had no name for. He was a tall, thin humanoid with equally narrow features. He appeared human, but his skin was a deep, rich hue of blue, his hair so black that it seemed to have blue tinges of color in it, and his eyes were orbs devoid of pupils, glowing an angry red in color. He was busy wiping down a glass with a rag that looked as if it should have been changed for a cleaner one several glasses ago. The alien regarded her with a narrowed, skeptical, and judgmental glare, peering at her face beneath her hood. She stared back at him, but he merely returned his attention to his glass, polishing it to a gleaming, greasy sheen. Foyi stared in bewilderment and growing frustration as the bartender merely let her sit there, refusing to acknowledge her presence. She tried clearing her throat, but his deliberate ignorance of his only current customer remained.

Finally, Foyi had had enough. She slammed a fist on the counter and growled, "Bartender!"

The bartender's head cocked more in her direction; without pupils or irises, she could not tell if he was actually looking at her, though she assumed that he was. "Can I helps yous? Get yous a drinks, perhaps?"

She frowned slightly at the bartender's odd grammar. "I'm looking for some people. People who work for the Anjiliacs."

The bartender snorted, an incredulous look on his face; at least, she believed it was incredulity she was looking at. "Anjiliacses? Trulies?"

"Um...yeah. Sure. I'm looking for these names, in particular: Utt, Warg, Bowarm, and Vohlgast. Two of 'em are Houks, one's a Weequay, and the other's a Zygerrian. Seen any of them come through here lately?"

The bartender was staring openly at her now, aghast, as if her question was completely ridiculous, not to mention unexpected. "Wha-? And if theys did comes through heres, what makes yous think Is would tell yous they did?"

She was about to answer when she became aware of another being settling himself beside her at the bar. She turned to the side to see the human male who had winked at her earlier, and she could not stop herself from rolling her eyes in exasperation at his wide, brilliant grin. His skin was dark brown, nearly black as his hair, which was straight, cut short, and thinning on top. He had long sideburns and a couple days' worth of stubble on his chin; his features were angular and sharp, and his eyes, though glazed by alcohol, were a startling, icy blue. There were pale, sharp tattoos scribed into the skin around his right eye, the significance of which she knew not. He was lean and wiry, but displayed a well-developed musculature. He was dressed in a nerf leather jacket over a simple, dark tunic and pants. There was an empty holster for a blaster pistol on his right hip, and while he had no other visible weapons, there were three thin cylinders attached to the back of his belt, the function of such devices also unknown. He carried a poisonous-looking drink in his left hand, and his grin was as wide as an idiot's. "Hey, beautiful. How 'bout I buy ya a drink, an' we can find ourselves a cozy little corner over there?" He gestured with a broad, vague wave toward the corner of the room that was uncomfortably close to the horrid cyborg with the red eyes and Trandoshan arm.

Foyi put the most disgusted expression on her face that she could manage and faced the drunkard with it. She had neither the time nor patience for some local nerfherder attempting to pick her up. "Look, friend, why don't you take your halitosis and disgusting mouthbreathing back to wherever it is you come from. I'm not interested in a drink with you, or doing anything, _ever_ , with you, so get lost."

If the man was disappointed by her response, he was not deterred. He leaned closer, the smell of alcohol thick on his breath. "You should really learn to relax, my Jewel of Ryloth. And learn to be friendlier; friendliness gets you far on Nar Shaddaa, haven't you heard?"

Foyi put a palm in his chest and pushed him a meter away from her, applying a tiny measure of the Force behind the motion to slam him bodily against the bar. "I said...get lost. The bartender and I have business, and you're interrupting it."

The man stared with a suddenly alert gleam in his eyes, and an expression that was unreadable as he studied her for a moment, attempting to reason through something in his mind. Then his expression descended into a mixture of regret and disappointment, and he meandered away from the bar without another word, stumbling and swaying back and forth as he made his way back to the table he had occupied. Foyi watched him go with an angry, distrustful gleam in her eyes, then swiveled around to face the bartender once more. The blue-skinned alien was still watching her with a mix of curiosity and apprehension as Foyi remarked, "Now, I believe you were going to tell me what I needed to know regarding my lost Anjiliac slavers. I need to speak with them on an important matter, and I'd hate to be kept waiting. I'm sure they wouldn't be happy if I showed up late to our meeting because some lowlife bartender had to ask too many questions."

The bartender glared at her. He did not seem to believe her, and thus was not intimidated. "I never seen yous in here befores, but the others is in here all the times. I is pretty sures they would have mentioned yous to I if they needed to see yous."

Foyi gritted her teeth and summoned the Force closer to her, lending her strength and mental concentration. She was going to have to try a different tactic, one she was not particularly adept at, but was worth a shot. She leaned closer over the bar, locking eyes with the bartender as she spoke slowly and with gravitas. "You will tell me where I can find these people I asked about. You will tell me what you know of the Anjiliac slaving operation on Nar Shaddaa." And as she said the words, she reached out with the Force, imposing her own will, however slightly, on that of the bartender's. She felt him struggle, felt the alien mind and his own unique thought patterns briefly rebel at the commands she had given him. But the Force was stronger than his limited and feeble mind, and with only a small modicum of effort, he surrendered to the mind trick, nodding and smiling in agreement.

"Is will tells yous that those guys have not been here since weeks ago, and Is hasn't seen them since." He placed the glass on the counter before him with loving caution, as if it were the most important thing in the entire galaxy. "The Anjiliacses runs slaveses all across Nar Shaddaas; only every once and awhiles does Reelos let them smuggles slaveses through the garbages. No slaveses has been through heres in a long times."

Foyi felt frustration and the cessation of hope beginning to well up in her. She shook her head to clear it, to regain her focus, her personal control. Another question came to mind, and she waved her hand as a focus for her next phrase. "You will tell me everything you know about Point Nadir."

The bartender blinked at her, and she could feel the small, fully-conscious remnant of his mind struggling again, denying her ability to retrieve the information from her. This surprised her, but she reasserted her will, pushing and clamping down upon his while beckoning the information she required to the forefront of his mind, pulling it from his lips. "Is will tell yous everythings I knows about Point Nadirs...It's a secret places, built in an asteroids or comets, far in the Outer Rims. The Empires don't know about it, so everyone goes there so they won't be bothered. The Anjiliacses knows where it is, but few others do, and that's the way the Huttses likes it."

"Do the Anjiliacs take a lot of their slaves there?"

The bartender nodded wistfully. "Oh, yes. Lots of slaveses there, and drugses, and pretty much anything else can be founds, or so Is heard. Not as big as Nar Shaddaas, but just as filthies. Maybe your friendses are there?"

Foyi considered that a moment, still turning over the possible existence of Point Nadir over in her head. More people had told her the place did not exist than others had, and yet this was the second connection she had found between the Anjiliacs and the supposedly mythical shadowport. It could not simply be coincidence or spacers' tales. There must be something to the legend; there had to be.

She leaned over the counter, dropping her tone as her eyes flicked back and forth to see if any nearby patrons were listening in on their conversation. "Is there anyone working for the Anjiliacs in this bar, right now? Anyone who might know my...lost friends?"

The bartender turned his head sluggishly about, then gestured at a few Houks and Nikto who were standing off to the side of the betting ring, apparently content to watch whatever small creatures were currently fighting to the death without participating in the betting. "Them over there works for the Anjiliacses. The Houks with the large ridges on his craniums; his names is Morb. I thinks he's friendses with Utt and Warg, the two Houkses you are looking for."

Foyi glared over her shoulder, and spotted the particular individual the bartender had pointed out. He was a massive specimen of the Houk species, well over two meters in height with muscular arms that were almost as thick around as her waist. The ridged crest atop his head was particularly hoary, with thick, bony protrusions that made it appear as if he were wearing a fearsome headdress instead of the prominent, misshapen dorsal regions of his skull. Unlike most of the patrons in the bar, he, along with his compatriots, were openly armed with blaster pistols and vibroblades. Morb even possessed a fearsome vibro-ax with a shortened handle, allowing the large alien to wield it single-handedly; the weapon was strapped securely to his back, though it still provided an unspoken, foreboding threat.

She took a deep breath and centered herself, relying on and submerging into the Force. She pushed away from the counter, saying, "Thanks for the help."

"Don't yous want a drinks?"

"No," Foyi replied simply as she walked away.

Foyi did not turn back to look at the bartender, but if she had, she would have seen a profoundly dejected look come over his face, and he went back to polishing his glass with a solemn, "Oh."

Foyi walked across the bar and sidled up to the small, jostling crowd, all those present attempting to gain a better view of the fight happening in the small arena sunken several meters into the floor. There were shouts, cheers, jeers, expletives, and groans as the crowd anticipated and reacted to every move the combatants made. Foyi peered between the shoulders of two Rodians to look down into the pit, and saw a mangy womp rat and an egregiously ugly mine crab. Both animals were already bleeding profusely from over a dozen superficial cuts, though the mine crab had the worst of it, one of its segmented legs broken, causing it to hop around as if inebriated. With a bloodcurdling squeal, the womp rat surged forward and bit down hard on another one of the mine crab's legs. The other creature gave a throaty cough, then wrapped its enormous mouth and jagged fangs around the womp rat's throat and went into a frenzy, its teeth sawing through fur, sinew, and blood vessel. The members of the crowd nearest the pit cheered as the womp rat's blood splashed their clothes, and the large rodent fell still, gasping weakly as the last of its lifeblood poured from its veins. Stacks of credits, jewelry, and other small objects that could be bartered for or exchanged for lucrative amounts of currency passed hands in a sudden frenzy, one that became all the more chaotic when the mine crab gave a last little squeak and expired, succumbing to its injuries.

Foyi felt revulsion and disgust at the spectacle, but she regained her focus. She had to remind herself that if she attempted to right every wrong she found on this moon, she would be here for the rest of her remarkably short life. She turned to Morb and his companions, who were nodding in approval at the bloodsport and speaking quietly amongst themselves. She could not hear what they were saying over the clamor of the crowd, but her impression of them in the Force was that they were thirsty, their minds turning toward the bar and the drinks it offered.

Foyi let them meander over to the bar as the crowd dispersed and a pair of Gran began to scoop up the remains of the combatants with their stubby, greasy hands. Foyi wended her way through the crowd, slowly and unassumingly returning to the bar at the same time the Houks and Nikto arrived. She listened to them as they ordered their drinks, mostly lomin ales and fogblasters, though Morb ordered an exotic and expensive Novanian grog. As the bartender prepared and mixed the ordered drinks, one of the Nikto noticed Foyi standing across the bar, and before she could avert her gaze, his eyes narrowed as he realized she was staring at them.

Foyi acted like she was waiting patiently for a drink, but her charade was not believable apparently, as soon she felt the shadows of Morb and the other tall humanoids with him falling upon her form. She looked up, peering at the Houk's irritated grimace from beneath the folds of her hood. For a moment, she struggled over several tactics and ways of approaching this unfavorable position, then decided on trying a persona that was charming, friendly, and flirty. She let a coy smile play across her lips, dropping her voice to a soft, unassuming tone that was subtly inviting as well. There was a small measure of the Force behind her words as well, in the hopes that Morb would be as susceptible to suggestion and telepathic manipulation as the bartender. "I was wondering when you boys would take notice of me," she purred. She gestured with an index finger at the Houk standing before her, coming close to but not quite touching. "Especially you, _muni_."

If Morb was enticed by her vivaciousness, he did not show it. His brow furrowed, making his small eyes seem even tinier, and growled, "Who are you? What's your name?"

"What's _yours_ , _ma lorda_?"

"I asked you first."

"Oh, very well," she replied teasingly. "I'm called Faye. I'm...new in town, and have been looking for a good time, and for some lively people to show me around. Interested?"

Suddenly, the bartender was there beside the group, plopping down the drinks the Anjiliac thugs had ordered. Upon seeing the Twi'lek again, his vision became clouded, and a small, wistful smile came to his face. "Ah...yous came back. Would yous like a drinks now, or do yous have more questions about Point Nadirs? Is can answers them the best Is can."

At the mention of Point Nadir, Morb's eyes opened wide, and his gaze refocused on the Twi'lek with the most murderous gleam she had seen thus far in his eyes. Foyi could not keep the dismay from her face as every expletive she knew in three different languages ran through her mind. She was about to turn to the bartender, to maintain her cover, pretend like she had no idea what he was speaking of. But Morb stepped closer, his large, unwieldy feet nearly standing upon her own, his bulk looming over her suddenly small form. The other Anjiliacs were shuffling on their own feet, their expressions evoking anger and murderous anticipation. "Have you been asking about Point Nadir?"

Foyi decided there was no point in maintaining the charade; her cover was blown anyway. She let her expression become fierce, instantly hostile, and commanding. "Yeah, I have. Normally, I would hope that would not be a problem, but considering who you goons are and who you work for, I naturally have a problem with you."

Morb was not intimidated, as he was accustomed to being the intimidating one in most confrontations. "What do you know of Point Nadir?"

"Not much, but I was hoping you could tell me." Foyi's hand suddenly flashed forward and grabbed a fistful of the Houk's crotch in a vice-like grip. Morb's eyes nearly popped from their sockets, so wide were they, and a pitiful squeal escaped from his large, rubbery lips. The other Houk and Nikto's hands reached for their blasters, but Foyi merely tightened her grip, and Morb, overwhelmed, waved them back. The Twi'lek leaned closer to Morb, who had bent over nearly double, putting his face about level with her own. She gave him a supremely confident smile she hoped he would find convincing and purred, "Now, _muni_ , I have some questions for you if you have a moment to spare."

Morb was breathing raggedly now, trying not to yell aloud from the pressure on his sex organs. She released her grip slightly, and Morb began to breathe easier. "Wha—What would you like to...know?"

"I'm looking for something your fellow scum took from me. A Twi'lek girl, about fourteen standard years old, named Tama. See, she's my sister, and your friends took her from me to sell her into slavery for whatever sick purpose you _sleemos_ kidnap innocent teenagers for. My information suggests that she was either taken here, on Nar Shaddaa, or to this mysterious Point Nadir. So if you want to add some specifics to that tidbit, I might consider not crushing the 'Dualities' in my fist."

Morb looked properly mortified at the suggestion, and hissed through clenched teeth, "Yeah, girlie, I got answers for you."

Foyi relieved a barest amount of pressure from her grip, and Morb breathed easier. He even turned his large flaps of skin that served as his lips upward in a sardonic grin, and before she could understand the reason for this change in attitude, something akin to the blow of a hammer struck her in the small of her back. The air rushed from her lungs as pain shot up and down her spine. Her grip instinctively loosened as she tried to turn to face her unseen assailant, but Morb struck her with a brutal backhand across the face that threw her against a nearby table. The table tipped over and tangled with her flailing limbs, spilling drinks and upsetting the Ithorian and Zeltron seated there. The world was tumbling about in her vision, flashing in and out of existence like the agonizing, scintillating displays back at Fezzie's.

She tried to struggle back to her feet, gasping for air and gritting her teeth in pain, but an enormous hand gripped her throat and lifted her bodily into the air. She kicked and struggled against Morb's furious grip as his muscles tensed, and her hurled her to the ground, slamming her back on the hard floor. Tears came to her eyes as she tried to regain some measure of oxygen, but her body had taken an awful pummeling in the last few seconds, and there was too much pain radiating from too many places for her to to even catch her breath. She felt a kick in the ribs from one of the Nikto, and the other Houk stomped on her arm when she tried to reach behind her, grasping for her discblade. Her armor had softened some of the blows she had suffered, but the pain still lanced through her body like hot vibroblades.

Morb stood over her, a mixture of victory and sadism twisting his face into a fearsome mask. "My answer, _schutta_ ," he growled through fetid breath, "is I got no answers for you, and you ain't gonna get none either." His massive fist dropped to his thigh and produced a blaster pistol, which he aimed down at Foyi's face.

But before he depressed the trigger, a clear, commanding voice rang out somewhere out of her sight. "You pull that trigger, Morb, and it'll be the last thing you do."

Foyi gasped, coughed, and craned her neck. Most of the patrons in the bar had been content to watch the mercenaries beat upon the Twi'lek; all save for one. Foyi was dismayed and surprised to see that her would-be rescuer was the same drunken man who had attempted to buy her a drink earlier at the bar. And yet, in the span of only a few minutes, he seemed to have gotten over his inebriation completely, for his icy gaze was clear, his legs firm, his back straight. He stood with his hands by his sides, his stance nonthreatening but ready. His gaze showed mild consternation, as well as a strange peace, a sense of belonging, as if he were meant to be in this exact situation at this particular time.

Morb stomped on her gut to make sure she stayed down, then turned to face the man who would prevent him from disposing of her. The other thugs also arrayed themselves around Morb, each of them pulling blaster pistols and aiming them at the dark-skinned man. "And who's this then?" Morb growled his challenge. "You ought to mind yer own kriffing business, _sleemo_ , before I squash you along with the brain tails."

The human's gaze took in each one of his opponents in turn, completely unconcerned with the weapons trained on him. He gave Morb a small grin and said, "Look, Morb, I know what kind of person you are, what kind of people you call associates. On any other day, I should cut you all off at the knees on principal alone. But I'm kind of tired today, and am not in the mood for a fight, so here's the deal: you put those silly blasters away, you leave the poor girl alone, and you walk out of here like nothing happened."

Worb's grip tightened on his blaster, giving a disgusted snort. "And if what if _I'm_ in the mood for a fight?"

The human's hand flashed inside his coat faster than could be perceived, and in the blink of an eye, he held a blade in his right fist, the point angled down to the floor. It was a long, slender knife with a single edge, polished and gleaming in the dim light, the hilt barely long enough for his palm to encompass. "Then none of you will get to walk out of here at all. Some of you might still be alive...depends on if you make me angry."

Morb and his cohorts erupted into peals of hoots, chortles, and guffaws when they saw the man's puny weapon and heard his threats. The human's grin only widened, showing rows of pearly white teeth, though the mirth never met his eyes. He still looked calm, collected, poised. Ready for anything.

When Morb had composed himself enough to answer, his blaster came back up in a steady aim, and he said, "Just you and that knife, and we're s'posed to be scared of a tantrum?" His voice took on a cruel edge as he ordered his compatriots, "Shoot this _murglak_."

The next few moments happened so quickly, only a few present were actually able to distinguish individual actions and reactions between the combatants, while most saw a blur of blades, limbs, and blaster bolts. Foyi, with Force-trained senses and wide-eyed incredulity, watched in amazement as the fight unfolded, and completely forgot how to breathe for a long, tense moment. Four streams of laser fire sped toward the single human, who was already surging forward as the thugs were still pulling their triggers. His armed hand flashed back and forth, the blade intercepting laser blasts and reflecting them into the floors, the ceiling, or the bar, behind which the bartender had ducked and activated a blast shield to protect himself. But one of those bolts was deflected perfectly, precisely, to return to the Nikto who had fired it, entering his eye and blowing a hole through the back of his head. Another bolt sped back to the other Houk, stitching a wound in his knee; he gave a surprisingly effeminate shriek and sprawled forward. And all the while, as blaster bolts converged on his speeding, spinning, whirling form, he was bouncing the knife back and forth between his two hands, alternating reflecting laserfire while reaching behind his belt for the strange metal cylinders attached to the back of his belt. And as he spun closer to the two opponents who remained standing, those cylinders were suddenly attached to the end of the blade's hilt, one after the other in the space of milliseconds, so that when he was within reach of Morb and the remaining Nikto, his small knife had suddenly become a polearm. His weapon restored, his entire attack approach was altered as he incorporated sidesteps and lunges, his staff weapon whirling around his body like the blurring blades of a ventilation fan. Morb and the Nikto were just beginning to back up as they realized the human was now within deadly striking range, but he did not slow down as he dropped into an incredibly low crouch to dodge the Nikto's blasterfire, then thrust forward and upward. The blade's tip caught the trigger guard of the Nikto's sidearm, and with a minor application of leverage, disarmed him, the blaster clattering across the floor. The Nikto did not even have time to shout in alarm as the polearm stabbed and slashed four times, opening a wound on each of the humanoid's shoulders, and cutting deep lacerations into the calves of his legs. He collapsed with a scream, all his limbs functionally useless to him.

Morb barely dodged a wide slash at his chest by sidestepping backward, his blaster still firing, still trying to track the human, who was moving so quickly, he was merely a dervish of motion. A blaster shot went into the blur and came flying back out, impacting with the pistol in the Houk's fist and spinning it away, smoking and sparking. Morb let out a roar as the blade stabbed forward, but scored only a superficial wound on the tough flesh of his muscular arm. He reached behind his back and spun the vibro-ax around his wrist, bringing it to bear as he switched on the vibration cell and the hefty metal blade began quivering on its housing. He brought the ax up in a brutal, downward chop, but the long handle of the human's weapon intercepted Morb's own weapon, slid into the space between the blade and handle, and wrenched the ax from his hands. Morb watched in horror as his weapon went spinning away, only to be caught by the human's free hand. The human spun a complete circle to gain momentum, and before Morb could respond or try to dodge, the ax was planted in his chest. Morb's eyes and mouth opened wide in shock and disbelief as he slowly looked down at the weapon buried nearly up to the hilt in his chest. He collapsed involuntarily to his knees, the impact sending spurts of blood flying from the wound and his gaping mouth, before he finally fell flat on his face, his expression frozen in shock and denial the entire time.

The human was the only one still standing over the carnage, two of the Anjiliac thugs dead, the other two moaning and cursing on the floor. His staff weapon was standing on its non-bladed end, his left hand holding it there casually, his strong, grim form needing no such support to remain standing. He did not appear to have a single wound, nor was there any sweat glistening on his skin. He acted as if taking down four armed roughs with only a bladed staff was not even remotely strenuous for him.

Those patrons who were not struck dumfounded by the shocking events had half-risen, looking for weapons or the exit. The strange and disconcerting cyborg was watching the human male with intense curiosity, and nodded his approval. The human looked about the room with a steely gaze, and rose his voice so that all could hear. "Anyone else have a problem with me helping this young woman out of here?"

No one dared to speak. Those that were armed, who had hands on weapons, slid them back in their holsters. The only sounds were those of the wounded thugs, blubbering in pain and cursing their attacker, leveling threats invoking the powers of the Anjiliac Clan. Satisfied, the man's hands flew up and down the staff, breaking it back down into its constituent parts and storing them in their unassuming locations upon his person. He then stepped over the corpses and rolling bodies and came to Foyi's side, helping her to stand, supporting her as she gasped with pain. He held her gaze for a moment, and a profound spiritual connection was established, a feeling of belonging, of similarity that transcended the myriad physical differences the pair possessed.

Foyi felt him in the Force, as assuredly as he did her. He was Force-sensitive.

And as this realization still had her staggered, the man's voice dropped to a whisper so that only she could hear. "I heard your conversation with Morb and his clowns, and I've decided to help you. I can get you to Point Nadir. I know where it is."

The man proceeded to help her across the bar and back to the entrance, where he retrieved her pack and blasters for her, and withdrew a WESTAR-34 Blaster Pistol from the box, which he dropped into his holster. Still supporting her, but making certain his hands and body remained at a respectful proximity toward her own, he helped her hobble into the skywalk beyond, and back into the heavily-polluted Nar Shaddaa air.

"Wh—Where are we...going?" Foyi gasped weakly.

"To my ship. I've got a little bit of bacta which will help you heal up those wounds. And then you can decide what to do from there."

"What...is your name?"

"Rayf Moors. Yours?"

"Foyi...Imbuma. Thank you."

"Pleased to be of assistance, milady."

As they hobbled away together, the blast shield around the bar in the cantina behind them opened slowly, and the bartender peeked out from his place of relative safety. He was obviously perturbed to see the bodies lying on the floor, blood pools spreading slowly over the cold metal. He sighed heavily, and looked genuinely sad, especially when he saw the glass he had spent so much time polishing had fallen from the counter and shattered. "What a messes."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The man calling himself Rayf Moors helped her through several dark, grimy alleyways, across skybridges and catwalks, up and down multiple levels through moss-covered stairs and creaking turbolifts. Eventually, she found herself at the top of a thin, rickety tower with a flat roof that served as an unintentional landing pad. The smells in the upper levels and atmosphere were not as overwhelming as the lower levels of Nar Shaddaa's endless snarl of urban overpopulation, though the wind was much stronger, carrying with it a curious mixture of moisture and particles of debris that were slimy on the skin, while the zephyrs were warm enough to make the skin of her scalp crawl. Upon the platform sat an odd ship Foyi did not recognize, looking like an oblong handle straddling a half-ovoid shape, with a pair of stubby wings protruding from its sides. The hull plating was heavily scratched, dinged, and carbon scored, though there was enough of the paint job left to show maroons, silvers, and blacks. Rayf explained that it was a starship constructed by a third party from the original designs for the _Firespray-31_ class Patrol and Attack Craft, which only saw limited use before the Clone Wars and niche markets and customers ever since then. He was obviously proud of his vessel when he shared its curious name: _The Flamusfracta_. Foyi found the name familiar, but could not recall from where she might have heard it, and found herself too hesitant to ask.

The interior of the starship was not particularly large, but surprisingly clean, orderly, and spartan in appearance and decoration. She got an impression that Rayf had structured his surroundings with functionality and pragmatism in mind, rather than indulging in style or creature comforts. He found her a seat that was only marginally comfortable, but remained serviceable. He then dug through some of his belongings and offered her bacta patches, which she declined with a mildly perturbed wave of her hand. Ultimately, she had suffered several bruises and minor cuts, and while the bruise to her jaw and her back were ugly and rather concerning, they were nothing she could not counteract with a healing trance.

She had not really needed any medical attention from him, anyway, though she had allowed herself to be helped along to a location where the two of them could speak more freely. For she had just met the first Force-sensitive not native to Yanibar, and only in the space of a few hours on a moon that most likely housed billions of beings. Such a meeting was too coincidental to actually be counted as a coincidence. It had to mean something.

But as Rayf busied himself about the ship, attempting to be a decent host and find her something to eat and drink, Foyi found herself at a loss for words. She could _feel_ him in the Force, like an exuberant geyser in the middle of a calm, gray sea. She could feel the connection he had to it, the power he could call on, and knew that as she studied him mentally and spiritually, he was similarly evaluating her. For she was not attempting to hide her own Force signature, though, in retrospect, considering she knew next to nothing about this man, may have been a wise course of action. He could be working with the Empire, a member of the feared Inquisitorius. Or worse, he could be a Jedi the Purge had failed to eliminate.

Foyi did not claim to be much of a people person, nor did she necessarily trust her first impressions of those she met. But she sensed no hostility from Rayf, and the Dark Side had not stained his soul as far as she could tell. All she felt from him was the same thin, unobtrusive currents he sent her way as the ones she searchingly probed his presence with. Accompanying these was a profound sense of peace, of belonging, as if he knew his exact place in the universe at all times, and was satisfied with the knowledge that he was where he needed to be. She realized she had so many questions, regarding himself, his abilities, his connection with the Force, and his claim to knowledge of Point Nadir's location. And yet, she could not find one word to speak, nor how best to breach any of these subjects.

Rayf handed her a cup of blumfruit juice, which she accepted gratefully, though she once again waved away the offer of food. She was too flustered, too pained, and too excited to eat, though she figured she could at least sip at the beverage, if for no other reason than to give her something to do in the heavy, awkward silence between them.

Finally, Rayf spoke. His voice was clear, soft, and gentle, the voice of a man who spoke little and did so when he felt it was necessary. "I must say I'm surprised, but very glad to meet you, Foyi Imbuma. It's been a long time since I met someone else who's Force-sensitive. I was beginning to think the Empire really had succeeded in killing or corrupting all those who could touch the Force left in the galaxy."

Foyi slurped from her cup, peering at him over the rim. "Is the Force where you got your...abilities?"

He smirked. "You mean my sick moves? I suppose the Force is largely responsible, though my Master could take some credit. In fact, he probably would have taken all the credit, were he still here. That's just the kind of person he was..."

"Are you some kind of...Jedi?" Foyi asked in an apprehensive tone.

"You know, I grew up thinking I was going to be one someday, but I guess it just wasn't in the cards. And for once, that wasn't the Empire's fault. I'm actually what's known as a Matukai Adept."

Foyi gave him a quizzical look. "I...can't say I've heard of 'Matukai' before...Wait, did you just make that up?"

Rayf chuckled. "No. Go ahead and feel me out if you have to; I'm not lying to you, though I completely understand your distrust. When the Empire eradicated the Jedi, the Matukai were next. We were a pretty obscure and exclusive...club, if you will, to begin with, and we're even more so now, considering I'm pretty sure I'm the last one alive." He retrieved a packet of nutrient bars from a container and flopped down in a seat across from her, savoring the bar as if it were a delicacy. "We Matukai were once a group of Force-sensitives who saw the Force not as a tool or an energy field outside of themselves, but the spiritual aspect of all beings, to be kept in perfect balance with the physical form. Our bodies are our temples as well as our weapons; we become one with the Force through physical exertion and honing all aspects of ourselves. We feel the Force through constant and consistent exercise, through breaking past our physical limits, through the balls of our feet and the knuckles of our fists."

"So...you're saying Matukai use the Force to hit things really hard with their fists?"

Rayf looked like he was going to argue that assertion, but then he shrugged and nodded. "Well, that's a simple, but pretty accurate description. For the most part. There's a lot more to being a Matukai Adept than that..." His hands flashed down to his jacket and his belt, and in the space of milliseconds, he had assembled his polearm once more, the butt of which he planted on the metal deck between his feet. "Like using one of these as an extension of our physical forms and our connection to the Force. Like the Jedi of old crafted lightsabers as a rite of passage and a mark of identification, each Matukai builds and uses his or her own wan-shen." He gestured to the polearm as he spoke the name, then leaned the weapon against the bulkhead and resumed his consumption of the tasteless nutrient bar. "Looks pretty wicked, doesn't it? Of course, it takes years to learn how to properly wield the thing, and even more time to master it. Not that I claim to be a master myself, but I get by."

"Obviously," Foyi remarked, recalling the fates of the Anjiliac thugs back in Baruk's Bar. "I've never seen someone move so quickly, so precisely. Were all Matukai like that in your day?"

"Whoa. 'In my day'? I ain't that old, sweetheart. But yeah, that's one of the things the Matukai were known for. That and our skills in martial arts. I know some Teräs Käsi, but have always preferred the Echani forms myself."

Foyi finished her juice and set the cup down before narrowing her gaze in scrutiny. "Well, that's all well and good, Rayf, and I must say that many of my questions have been answered. However, none of what you've said so far explains why you chose to help me in the cantina. I know it didn't look like it, but I had everything fully under control." Even as she said the last phrase, however, she could not evoke the sense of confidence she wished to convey, considering she did not truly feel it.

"Of course you did," Rayf replied. She was uncertain whether his words were meant to be patronizing or not. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared intently at her, those frigid eyes of his piercing past her physical shell. "I chose to help you, Foyi Imbuma, because I believe I was _meant_ to help you. I feel the Force...speaking to me when I'm around you. I've wandered the galaxy for a long time, always hiding in plain sight, always on the run. But today, I walked into that bar, and I felt more at peace, at _home_ , than I have since I left the Jedi Temple. I found the feeling strange, indescribable, but palpable, as if I was rooted to the spot, as if I could not leave the bar even if I wanted to. So I bought some drinks, and resolved to wait until the Force revealed what it wanted of me. And when you walked in, I just _knew_ that I was meant to help you...and I didn't even know yet that you were looking for something or that you needed help."

"So you were listening when I was speaking with Morb and his goons?"

Rayf nodded. "I heard about your sister and how you're looking for her, to rescue her from Anjiliac slavers. I think I have a pretty good idea of where she might be..."

"Point Nadir?" Foyi interjected hopefully.

Rayf nodded solemnly. "What makes you think she might have been taken to Point Nadir?"

A shadow crossed over Foyi's expression as she recalled the death of Lido at her hands, and the cold, slimy feeling of the Dark Side worming its way through her spirit. "I never spoke with the slavers myself, but I did get information from someone who had, and he claimed that the spacers mentioned operating out of Point Nadir. It's...a real place, isn't it?"

Rayf leaned back in his seat, letting out a heavy sigh. "It's a real place, alright. Its a hidden spaceport built inside a comet called...um, Resh 9376, I think. Deep in the Outer Rim. It's a place for pirates, smugglers, spicerunners, all kinds of scoundrels, scum, and villainy. It's one of the Anjiliac Clan's main bases, and they move a lot of slaves through there on a regular basis. The place is supposed to be pretty hush-hush, though, so if these mercs of yours mentioned it, it was probably important enough to assume that your sister will end up there, or at least pass through there onto other buyers." He noticed the angry scowl growing on her face, and a pained grimace came to his own. "Hey, look, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be insensitive here, just realistic. How long has your sister been gone?"

Foyi took in a deep breath, considering for a moment whether she should really be talking to this man. Whether she should be trusting him at all. His story about the Force guiding him to her seemed rather convenient, though even among the independently minded Zeison Sha, there were proponents of the theory of the Living Force constantly whispering and guiding those who could touch it. And she could not deny that though she should feel at least somewhat uncomfortable around this person she had known for the space of an hour, she did not. Instead, she felt a sort of kinship with Rayf, an impression of belonging, as if sitting with him on this ship had been preordained, and she was meant to be here all along.

Or maybe Morb had hit her in the head harder than she had first realized.

Finally, she decided to play along for now and answer. After all, this man claimed he could get her to Point Nadir, and that was the important aspect of this whole bewildering situation. "She's been gone for about a week now. At least, I think it's been a week...I'm not sure what the time differential between Yanibar and Nar Shaddaa is."

Rayf was taken aback. "Yanibar, huh? So that's where you're from? You and your sister?"

Foyi merely nodded. Rayf whistled. "I've never been there myself, but from what I've heard, that's a hell of a place to live."

"It can be." She stood and stretched, testing the muscles that had been bruised by her beating at the hands of Morb and his thugs. "As lovely as this chat and the juice has been, Mister Moors, I'm really short on time...my _sister_ is short on time. So if you have coordinates for Point Nadir and how I can get there, I'd appreciate the help, and then we can go our separate ways."

Rayf stood as well, deep concern written across his face. "Well, I hate to break it to you, Foyi, but I could tell you all about Point Nadir, how to find it, how to get in, the whole ball of Hutts. But you aren't getting in there without me."

"Why you, specifically?"

"I do...odd jobs for some people in power there. From time to time. Point is, they know me, so they'll actually let you in if I'm with you. Otherwise, you'll end up having to go through a lot of scrutiny that I'm sure you don't want."

Foyi considered it for a moment. "So you are willing to fly me to Point Nadir, and help me rescue my sister, even if it means turning that entire comet inside out?"

"That's what I've been trying to say."

Her brow furrowed in suspicion. "Why?"

"As I said, the Force-"

She made a cutting motion with her hand. "I know what you said. I want to know what _you_ get out of it."

Rayf sighed, seating himself once more. "Fine. Let me tell you a story, Foyi. I was discovered to have minor Force potential when I was only a few months old, and taken to the Jedi Temple to be trained as a Jedi. Turns out my Force sensitivity wasn't as potent as the Masters at first believed, and I flunked out of the Jedi Initiate Trials. The Council wanted me to work in the Service Corps, doing menial tasks and growing plants and all that _kark_ , and I knew I didn't want that, so I left the Order entirely. And that's when I was approached by the Matukai Adept who would become my teacher and master, and through his training and the ways of the Matukai, I realized greater Force potential than I had ever thought possible out of my mediocre self. And then the Empire came, and everything changed. The Jedi were slaughtered, and even as we Matukai watched and realized we could do nothing, Palpatine turned his attention toward us and wiped us out. I've managed to stay ahead of the Inquisitors and Shadow Guards and Purge Troopers by never staying in one place for too long, pretending to be a gambler, smuggler, and all-around scoundrel so that I don't literally have to bury myself in a hole on some backwater like Ziost or Tatooine...or Yanibar. Sorry." He smiled sadly, his eyes looking back into past events only he could see and relate to. Foyi had not understood half of the things he referred to, but she did not interrupt, waiting patiently for the conclusion of his meandering story. "Problem is, I got so good at playing the part, I became the mask I'd been wearing for so long. And while it's kept me alive, I found that I don't particularly like myself as I am. I...didn't want to be the person I am. I wanted to be a Jedi so badly, so that when I was deemed unfit, I threw myself headlong into the Matukai tradition. You see, being a Jedi, or a Matukai, was always a means to an end for me; I realized I was different from others, different from birth, touched by the Force. And I realized that since I was different, since I had the potential to be powerful, I had to act differently from those around me. Instead of focusing on my own selfish needs and desires, I looked at all the injustices, pain, and sorrow experienced by others in this broken galaxy, and I asked myself, 'Can I do something about this?' So for me, being a Jedi, or a Matukai, is more than establishing and balancing my own relationship with the Force, but using the Force as a tool with which I might make a positive change in the galaxy. And now I've found a wrong that I might help right, one that the Force itself has brought me to. All this time, all these years, bouncing from one end of the galaxy to the next, I've simply been surviving, even thriving. But not living. Not measuring up to my potential." His gaze met her own, and sincerity was the only thing she saw in those frigid, pale eyes. "Rescuing your sister will give me a chance to live again, by ensuring that she will get that same chance. Please, Foyi Imbuma...let me help you."

Foyi could not help the minute smile that came to her lips. Previously, she had seen herself as not really having a choice in the matter. After all, Rayf claimed he knew where Point Nadir was, had a ship he was willing to let her aboard, and was offering his knowledge and impressive skillset to the task of rescuing her sister. Given these advantages, she had no choice but to agree, for Tama's sake. But now, after listening to his "testimony", she felt far better about her choice. "Alright, Mister Moors. I will gladly accept your help, since you are so adamant in helping."

Rayf gave her a boyish grin, which was interrupted by a momentary scowl. "It's Rayf, by the way. If we're going to be working together, you're going to make my skin crawl with 'Mister Moors' all the time."

Foyi sighed. "Very well, Rayf." She cast a glance about the interior of the ship with an inquisitive eye. "Do you have other business on Nar Shaddaa, or may we go now?"

Rayf gave her an incredulous look. "I'm sorry, but how long have you been on Nar Shaddaa?"

Foyi checked her chrono. "About three or four hours."

Rayf began to clamber up to the cockpit. "Then I understand your hurry...that's three or four hours too long. Let's go save your sister."

* * *

The trip to Point Nadir was a lengthy one, even longer than the voyage from Yanibar to Nar Shaddaa. It was only the second time in her life that Foyi had traveled the stars in a spacecraft, and she already found it unbearably boring. It was not due to the company, as Rayf was an interesting individual, full of unique insights and wild stories. But her sense of crushing, indomitable time had not lessened, and the fact that she would have to spend long hours in hyperspace once again while her sister was transported the Force knew where made her sick with worry. Her only consolation was the fact that Tama's captors most likely were spending equal amounts of time in hyperspace, and as long as they were not taking her from Point Nadir, she may yet catch up to them.

At least, that was her fleeting, failing hope.

As they traveled, she spent a few hours in a deep, meditative trance, gaining the equivalent of the regenerative properties of actual sleep, as well as enhanced healing of her wounds. She found herself longing for sleep, as she could no longer remember when she last lay down for even a short nap. But she did not give herself the option. She had to stay aware, strong, and whole, for Tama's sake.

To try and get her mind off the unknown horrors possibly being visited upon Tama at every possible second, Foyi spent some time exploring the ship known as _The Flamusfracta_ and conversing with Rayf. The _Firespray-31_ was significantly smaller than Pash's ship, with more claustrophobic rooms and a greater premium on space. However, most of the chambers and rooms within the ship were not actively used, and those that were showed only infrequent visitation. Either Rayf did not spend a lot of time on his ship, or he believed in keeping an unusually tidy vessel. The supplies and foodstuffs aboard were as generic and bland as any she had ever come across, though the blumfruit juice was still delicious.

Rayf spent most of the journey in one of the empty rooms with the staff weapon he called a wan-shen, working his way through blurring martial arts maneuvers against countless imaginary opponents. When she asked what he was doing, he did not even pause in the middle of a form that was composed of a multitude of lightning-fast stabs, followed by wide sweeping arcs of his blade. He merely answered with a calm, even breath, "I'm meditating." She then watched his "meditation" with interest as the time stretched on into an hour or more, and he still showed no signs of stopping or slowing, and only began to sweat small rivulets toward the end of his meditative session. Foyi had known only a few members of the Zeison Sha who had practiced a type of "moving meditation", where they would practice tosses with their discblades or repetitive activities to produce a deeply contemplative and introspective state. She had even known one of the Masters who could descend into a regenerative meditation session by consistently juggling his discblade between his hands telekinetically.

Rayf later questioned her about her own connection to the Force, as well as her training and abilities. After some hesitation, she revealed that she was a Zeison Sha Warrior; she felt a twinge of disappointment when Rayf replied that he had never heard of the organization. It did give her a chance to show off a bit with her discblade, something she typically did not do, but once again, it was an activity with which to take her mind off of Tama's predicament. Rayf was mightily impressed with her command over telekinetic Force powers, something that he admitted had never come very easily to him. He also displayed happiness when she explained how the Zeison Sha still thrived in secret, though their numbers were few and the Empire had done its best to erase their cultural identity, their very existence, from the harsh surface of Yanibar.

"It's great to hear there are still Force-users out there who have survived the Emperor's fury," Rayf remarked. Foyi was surprised but encouraged to see that sharing her knowledge and experience as a Zeison Sha had provided him a lift to his spirits he had greatly needed.

Finally, the navicomputer chimed, and they dropped out of hyperspace. Foyi, despite her frustration with space travel, was dazzled once again by the solemn, empty beauty of space, the countless stars filling her vision. But it was the celestial object hanging in the middle of the expansive viewport that inevitably drew her attention, the comet known as Resh 9376. She had never seen a meteorite or comet before, so she had no previous experience or comparison, but she found this one hauntingly beautiful. It was a rough, oblong shape of ice and ore, looking not unlike a hat squashed on the floor or a crumpled article of discarded clothing. Its surface was a tortured, pockmarked collection of varying stones, minerals, and ores, sheathed in jagged ridges and spires of ice. Jets of vapor hissed intermittently from its surface, projecting outward into space and creating a halo of barely-visible atmosphere. From her vantage point, it seemed that the comet before her was not moving at all, but on the far side of its asymmetric mass, the corona of dust and vapor trailed off into a tail of pale light, suggesting that the asteroid was moving at a speed fast enough to produce such a path of detritus in the void. In the side facing them, a large hole had been slashed into the comet's exterior, like the gaping maw of space slug, its throat a dark void of shadows.

Foyi looked over to Rayf. His piercing gaze was still calm, detached, distant even, though his brow had furrowed slightly. "This is it. Point Nadir." He began broadcasting a hailing signal, and sighed heavily. "May the Force be with us both."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Rayf had put _The Flamusfracta_ into a steady, elliptical orbit around the asteroid, an unassuming flight pattern that he had explained in an aside to Foyi was expected of regular visitors. His hail had not been answered yet, but he also assured her it was customary for Point Nadir Traffic Control to let visitors sit and stew for awhile. "After all, they need some time to give us a nice long scan, make sure we're actually someone who's supposed to be here."

Foyi felt her _tchun_ twitch nervously. "And...are we supposed to be here?"

Rayf shrugged. "Not necessarily, but those who are 'in the know' on Point Nadir are allowed to come and go as we please. Just as long as Traffic Control gets a match for my vessel in their databanks, and I don't put up too much of a fuss about the local 'port authority' shaking me down for fees, we won't have a problem." Foyi looked nonplussed, to which Rayf merely shrugged again. "What do you want? It's one of the most secret shadowports in the galaxy, run by Hutts, slicers, and gangsters."

The comm terminal crackled, and a flat, authoritative voice spoke in clipped tones. "Welcome back, Captain Moors. You are cleared for landing. Follow the beacon and do not deviate from the provided course."

Rayf pressed the button to answer the hail. "Thanks, boys. Always great talking to ya." There was no answer to his cheerful remarks, save for a flashing light seen in the shadows of the comet's bulk, pulsing above the gaping maw in the side of the icy stone. Rayf adjusted the ship's approach and opened the throttle, the Firepray wheeling through the black. The dark void, blacker than the space and the stone surrounding it, grew in the viewports, like the distended jaws of an exogorth swelling to swallow their ship whole. Foyi could not suppress a twinge of subconscious claustrophobic discomfort as the darkness swallowed them. She felt as if the dark, ice-slicked walls of the comet's gullet were pressing down on her chest, her face, her _lekku_ , despite the fact that the tunnel must have been over five hundred meters in diameter, which meant there was plenty of empty space between the exterior hull of the ship and the interior walls of the tunnel. Rayf's hand input a few commands on the console before him, and _The Flamusfracta_ 's exterior lights snapped on, ghostly cones of light that illuminated only a small portion of the tunnel ahead, which twisted and turned out of sight. Foyi leaned forward as objects floated into the light, and she realized she was looking at debris and torn sections of starship, from vessels throughout the centuries who had been not so fortunate in navigating the tunnel's confines. There was an inert CloakShape Fighter spinning slowly on its wings, its rear maneuvering fin sheared off from some long-past catastrophe. A large section of fuselage with exposed holes that denoted ejected escape pods whirled past the upper portions of the viewport, close enough that Rayf had to dip the starship downward to avoid it. As he steered the ship around the sharp corner in the midst of the tunnel, they had to juke and dodge through several torn sections of hull that had once belonged to a lengthy, sinister vessel that had been shredded when impacting the bladed corner of the tunnel. Closer inspection revealed it to be the mangled corpse of a _Derriphan_ -class Battleship of the Old Sith Empire, marking the vessel as thousands of years old. Even as they passed beneath one of the large portions of the hull, Foyi had to suppress a shiver as weak but no less malevolent currents of the Dark Side lapped at her subconscious, icy claws caressing her brain. She looked to Rayf to see if he felt it as well, and the slight furrow in his brow showed that he had.

A few moments of silence sliding through the dark and avoiding the detritus of those who had come before and never left deposited them in a wider section of the tunnel, which only increased in scale, until the walls fled out of range of the exterior lights. But now they had come into a humongous cavern, the exact dimensions of which were unfathomable due to the distance and the cloying darkness beyond their view. But the contours and perimeters of the caverns could be glimpsed only in part, for there were infrequent clusters of lights along the outer edges, denoting the tangle docking clamps, umbilicals, enclosed catwalks, and languidly-floating chains that provided meager accommodations for visiting starships to secure themselves in the lack of gravity. As the ship sped through the open, lightening darkness, more shapes came into view, some stationary, others moving quickly back and forth. There were small shuttles and skiffs zipping across the cavern's expanse, heading to the starships tethered along the outer walls, while others were returning the an extensive row of docking bays, large, rectangular structures protruding from the far wall of the cavern, where hundreds of small lights provided a gloomy, eerie sort of illumination across the back wall of the cavern. There were the occasional starships piloted by other visitors or residents of Point Nadir, some maneuvering around Rayf and Foyi to leave through the tunnel they had entered, while others sidled up to the haphazard and disconcerting snarl of random, slapdash docking capabilities along the outer walls. Foyi was glad to see that Rayf was steering _The Flamusfracta_ for the boxy hangars looming ahead, their open blast doors protected by atmospheric shields, keeping at bay the insatiable hunger of hard vacuum.

Foyi peered closely at the bright rectangle of light coming toward them, seemingly to swallow them whole, as had the tunnel before it. She stood slightly from her seat to crane her neck and thus increase her visual range about the viewports. "What...is this place? This cave...it's humongous. It must be the entirety of the comet; is Point Nadir completely hollow?"

Rayf shook his head, a bemused smile on his lips. "Not even close. This is Fische's Cove, named for the first pirate to have the vapebrained idea of setting up a base here. It's where all the ships dock, unless you've got lots of creds and an in with Epsis, and you can afford to dock in one of the hangars. It's true, the cove takes up a large section of comet's interior, but this comet is a lot larger than it appears from space." He turned to her with an expression that was both anticipatory and apprehensive. "You haven't seen any of Point Nadir yet, Foyi."

His tone was confusing, and she cocked her head toward him, her _tchin_ arcing slightly in an unspoken question. "Is that a good thing...or a bad thing?"

Rayf shrugged as the hangar dominated the viewpoints, the shimmering environmental fields clearly in view. "Give it a couple hours...you'll be able to answer that question for yourself."

"You mentioned a word I haven't heard before: Epsis. Who's that?"

"Epsis is a _what_ , made up of _whos_ , I suppose. It's one of the major players in Point Nadir here. Not unlike Nar Shaddaa, Point Nadir has no formal, recognized body of government, but some sense of law and order is maintained by the local crime syndicates. An offshoot of the Anjiliac Clan is in charge here, run by Zietta the Hutt; they run a lot of spice, contraband, and especially slaves through here. Next in power is Epsis, the organization I freelance for. They're a bunch of techno wizards, slicers, and black marketeers, focusing on experimental, proprietary, and military technologies. They're run by Liash Keane, an Ubese with a mean streak the size of Hutt Space if you get on her bad side, but not so bad to work for if you actually know what you're doing."

Foyi gave him a suspicious glare out of her peripheral vision. "What is it that you do for Epsis, exactly?"

"I've picked up some technical skills while keeping a low profile and living on the edge. Turns out that I'm not just good at flying ships or hitting people with sticks, but I have a natural affinity for slicing electronics and fixing droids and such. I've never given a direct commitment to Keane's organization, so I'm not exactly assigned any tasks that are too dangerous or important, but I'm tolerated here. It's why I'm allowed to dock in The Slips, which are this row of hangars ahead of us...assuming I pay all the fees and dues that come with getting the special treatment."

 _The Flamusfracta_ cruised into the confines of the hangar, this one in particular being large enough to house two starships of the same size, though not much else. The hangar was a brightly-lit space containing spare cargo cylinders, labor droids in recharge mode, and a floor crisscrossed with refueling hoses. Foyi felt a sense of vertigo as the starship tipped backward and settled on its rearmost section, completing the landing sequence, the rafters and catwalks near the ceiling hanging far above her head through the viewports. Both Rayf and Foyi unbuckled themselves from their seats and clambered down into the belly of the ship, heading for the door that would let them exit into the hangar. Foyi felt a strange, ill sensation spreading from her chest and down through her digestive system, as if the juice and nutrient bars she had consumed a few hours before were only now just spoiling in her stomach. She recognized the cold grip of fear and the ecstasy of excitement coagulating into a potent, poisonous mixture in her body. She felt a sudden certainty, a closeness, a familiarity she only felt when Tama's presence was nearby. Foyi paused before the door and tentatively dipped her hand into the limitless ocean that was the Force, feeling about for the residual current, the ripples having been left by the metaphysical passage of her sister. Desperate to catch a glimpse of her sister, to contact her Force presence again, to feel the familiar mental touch of her sister, to send her a message of reassurance and encouragement. But she drew back as the waters grew cold around her; there were dark shapes moving in the depths, and they had sensed her, perhaps had felt her presence long before she had registered theirs. She broke the surface in fear and desperation, and emerged into the waking world once more. Foyi blinked rapidly until her surroundings came into focus again, to find Rayf standing in front of her, his hands on her shoulders, his gaze locked with hers.

"Hey, you alright? I lost you there for a moment, but I could feel you reaching out through the Force...and then I felt your alarm. What happened?"

Foyi stepped back, shrugging Rayf's hands from her shoulders. "I...Tama is here, Rayf! Or, at least, she was...I can't be sure, my senses are so...clouded for some reason." She rubbed her temples as she massaged the headache that was beginning to manifest within her skull. "There are other things here, too. I mean, other Force-sensitives, tainted by the Dark Side. I...I think they saw—felt—me, but I don't think they found me."

Rayf's mouth was a thin, grim line as he considered her words. "That's what I was afraid of. I've always been very careful while here, because I too have felt sinister presences in the port. If we keep a low profile, we should be fine. But keep your senses sharp, and let me know if you get any other insights as to Tama's location or well-being. The bonds of family are strong, especially so in Force-sensitives, and your ability to hone in on her presence may be the ticket to actually finding her."

Foyi was about to argue, to retort with an angry jab that her senses were plenty acute and she could handle herself. She had to pause and recenter herself, allowing her to see clearly. Rayf had merely been concerned for her well-being and state of mind, so she reminded herself to give him a chance, to not be so hostile to her only ally. In the end, she merely nodded, and Rayf, with a last glance at her, opened the door and they stepped out into the hangar together.

They found a trio of Houks awaiting them at the bottom of the ramp, dressed in padded armor, blaster rifles and vibroblades on their backs, Anjiliac insignias emblazoned proudly upon their chest and shoulder armor. None of the Houks' expressions were inviting, and the middle one displayed a wide smile that was not even remotely pleasant. Foyi's hand began to reach for one of her weapons, but Rayf greeted the trio with a wide grin of his own. "Tornu! How's my favorite extortionist in the whole wide comet?"

The Houk with the toothy grin let his smile slip a little, obviously annoyed. "Moors, it's been awhile. But when I heard you were coming in again, I thought I'd swing by and reacquaint myself with your ugly mug." His gaze shifted to the side, then narrowed. "Don't remember you traveling with company. Who's this then?"

Before Foyi could answer, Rayf threw a startling arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. "Tornu, this is my cousin, Oola! She helped me out in one of my last jobs, so I figured I would show her how far you really have to go to get a decent drink in this galaxy."

One of the other Houks snorted, and Tornu's grin returned, although it was merely a component of his disbelieving expression now. "Cousin? Really?"

Foyi gave Rayf a dubious glare, but he was still focusing on Tornu. "Yeah! Distantly related! One or two-" Rayf glanced down at Foyi. "-species removed. Give or take. Real handful most of the time."

Tornu's grin turned malicious. "You know, you get tired of babysitting her, we could always take her off your hands. As they say, 'what's a Twi'lek amongst friends', right?"

Foyi took a threatening step forward, but Rayf's grip on her shoulders tightened, halting her. "Well, I appreciate that, Tornu, I really do. But I think I'll keep an eye on her for now. May aunt would have my asteroids for dinner if I let anything happen to Lil' Oola here, and I know you don't know my aunt, but she could tear the arms off a gundark. No joke."

Tornu gave a humorless chuckle. "If you say so, Moors. Now, as fun as it is listening to your ceaseless lies again, you know what I'm here for."

Rayf sighed, but he kept a smile plastered to his face as he withdrew his credit chip. "Yeah yeah, I know. So what do I owe ya?"

"You got any cargo?"

Rayf shook his head. "Nope."

"Your 'cousin' counts as cargo, so that'll be extra. You here on a job?"

Rayf gave him a disgruntled glare. "You know I'm not going to answer that either way."

Tornu sneered. "I'll take that as a yes, then. How long you staying?"

"As long as I need to."

Tornu was calculating now, counting on a few of his stubby fingers. "Okay...then that'll be two hundred credits."

Foyi's jaw dropped, but Rayf was already handing over his credit chip. Tornu plugged the chip into a datapad, scrolled through a few options onscreen, then handed the chip back to Rayf. His grin grew wider, and he gave Rayf a mock, sadistic grin. "Pleasure doing business with you, Moors. Welcome once again to Point Nadir. I hope you and your 'cousin' enjoy your stay."

Rayf tucked the credit chip away, a wide grin on his smile. "And I hope you and your goons meet a friendly Nadir spider." Foyi did not know what a Nadir spider was, but she knew by the human's insincere tone that his response had not been meant positively. For their part, the Houks merely turned around and left, laughing amongst themselves, perfectly happy with the money they had deprived Rayf of.

Foyi waited until they had left the large, echoing hangar, then turned to Rayf. "Why did you just let them walk away with so much money?"

Rayf merely shook his head in exasperation. "Those nerfherders work for Zietta the Hutt, and thus have all the power of the Anjiliac _kajidic_ in this shadowport behind them. They make rounds to all the berths and hangars, collecting 'docking fees' from those who visit, even semi-regulars, like me. You don't want a fatal meeting with Zietta, you let yourself get extorted, simple as that. Welcome to Point Nadir, by the way."

Foyi stared at the exit from the hangar, as if she could burn holes through the unseen backs of the Houks by sight alone. "So...we're cousins?"

Rayf shrugged. "Honestly, if I'd told them you were my slave, or girlfriend, or bunk-buddy, they probably would have believed that more readily. However, that would have probably made you hit me, and I did not feel like getting hit today. So yeah, now we're cousins."

Foyi let an exasperated sigh escape her lips. "Fine. We're cousins." She walked to the bottom of the ramp, taking a large inhalation of the stale, artificial atmosphere, coughing as she took in the acrid scents of chemicals, spilled coolant and fuel, sweat, overly-filtered oxygen, and a musky, mouldering odor she did not recognize. She was also surprised that the gravity was not considerably lower than what she had experienced on Yanibar and Nar Shaddaa, though she could not deny a small lightness in her chest and a minute spring to her step. Her footsteps rang in a dull echo in the empty hangar, and she felt the sound had a forlorn quality to it.

Rayf strode down the ramp as well, his boots clanking loudly on the metal deck, as if he were perfectly fine disturbing the solemnity of the otherwise empty hangar. "So...", he began. "What's our next move?"

"We have to locate Tama. When I reached out with the Force, I felt her presence, but I wasn't able to pinpoint her exact whereabouts. I'd like to try again..."

"...except for the other Force-sensitives who may or may not be friendly," Rayf finished. "Yeah, alerting them probably isn't the smartest first move. So we'll need some more tangible clues to follow."

Foyi nodded. "Exactly. So I thought I could try and find out where the Anjiliac _sleemos_ who took her are."

"Well, Zietta and her Anjiliac goons are all over this station. So, we'll need names or some sort of identifying characteristics to track them down. Do you know what ship they were flying here?"

Foyi shook her head. "I don't know the name of the ship. But I would never forget what it looks like." She had made certain to commit every detail she had seen of the L4000 transport, embedding the memory of the ship and her sister's capture deep within her _lekku_.

Rayf was thinking over her words, his eyes lighting up as he considered several ideas. "Do you think you'd be able to identify the ship through security footage, or a holorecording, or something like that?"

She faced him, already impatient to learn what ideas he might have. "I'm certain of it. What do you know?"

He gave her a rakish grin. "It's not _what_ you know, Foyi, it's _who_ you know. Come on...there's a guy who owes me a favor who just so happens to be in charge of a lot of security measures here in the Slips. If the people who kidnapped Tama docked their ship here, which I would bet a gizka's ass they did, then there's a record of it. Just let me do all the smooth talking, and we'll soon know the names and captains of every single ship in the hangars here." He then strode across the deck to the exit, practically skipping in anticipation, or possibly due to the lighter gravity, and Foyi followed him, eagerness and urgency twisting together in her chest.

The exit from the hangar opened into a series of cramped tunnels and thin thoroughfares haphazardly dug through the rough interior of the comet. Dim lights flickered on and off due to the fickle nature of the electrical systems that supplied them with power, while the occasional lamp cast shifting, eerie shadows. There were other beings passing through the tunnels, shoving past the pair with barely a glance and the occasional uttered curse or demand to make way. There were enough travelers moving to and from the hangars known as the Slips that there were points in the thoroughfares where Foyi found herself literally shoulder to shoulder with Houks, Nikto, humans, Mon Calamari, and even a fearsome Anzati. It was a confusing jumble of shapes, voices, sights, and smells as they walked briskly through tunnel after tunnel, turning corners and following switchbacks, until Foyi felt dizzy just trying to remember the way back to their hangar. It was only moments later that she realized she had completely lost her bearings, so she kept Rayf's muscled back in sight, making certain it did not disappear into the morass of moving bodies. They came to a section of tunnel where the expanse between the enclosing walls widened, and she began to see multiple doorways, some open, others closed, leading into other caverns, tunnels, and what appeared to be shops, judging by the flashing signs and "windows" that surrounded these particular entrances. The crowds were thicker in this section of the comet's innards, and ahead, she saw freestanding edifices that were not simply carved into the rock and ore. Rayf maneuvered around a trio of Devaronian males whose facial features suggested common ancestry, then angled his approach for a building near the end of the thoroughfare running adjacent to the Slips. It was a low, squat establishment of stone and metal, its entrances sealed by blast doors and watched by sensors and holocams. A single guard stood outside the door, an armored Ubese with a DC-17m Interchangeable Weapon System, a threatening piece of tech from the Clone Wars. Rayf strode up to the Ubese as if he was meant to be there and exchanged a few words in a low tone, the Ubese responding in clipped, digitized phrases. A moment later, the main entrance slid up and out of sight, and Rayf beckoned Foyi into a stark, spartan lobby. A protocol droid with silvery, rusting frame greeted and beckoned them through the small lobby and down a claustrophobic hallway to another door at the end, which opened up into a small, dimly-lit office. The room contained a desk, a staggering amount of computer equipment and screens that were turned away from Rayf and Foyi's sight, and a pair of chairs that were little more than metal frames shoddily welded together. Behind the desk, regarding them with an expression that was truly unreadable, was a male Duros, his crimson eyes glowing slightly in the poor illumination. He was dressed in a dark, neatly-tailored suit jacket over a maroon shirt, and his thin, green fingers were steepled before his chin. As Rayf entered the room, his brow rose slightly over his left eye, but upon seeing Foyi, his gaze narrowed, perhaps in suspicion.

Foyi stood in the doorway, unsure what to do, but Rayf flopped into one of the extremely uncomfortable chair and propped his boots on the Duros' desk, causing his glare to change to anger and shift to the human male. "Puzell! How's my favorite Duros in the sector?"

Puzell's reply was dry, soft, and concise. "I believe I'm the only Duros you know in this sector, Moors."

"And that's why you're my favorite! There's no competition to compare you to!"

Puzell's fingers unraveled from their interlocked state, and he placed his palms flat on his desk. "My time is very valuable, Moors. Do not make me regret choosing to see you. Either tell me what it is you think you need, or be on your way."

"We need you to help us find a ship we're looking for," Foyi interjected, refusing to be ignored by this Puzell character.

Puzell's gaze slid slowly and inexorably to her, as if he were dragging his eyeballs across his inner lids. "And you are?"

"My cousin," Rayf answered for her with a jovial air. "See, my cousin and I are looking for a certain ship we lost track of back on Nar Shaddaa...or possibly Yanibar...it's all a little confusing, so I'll spare you most of the unnecessary details-"

Puzell raised a hand, his gaze flicking back and forth between Foyi and Rayf. "I'm going to stop you there, Moors. I'm an underboss for Epsis. I have more responsibilities than your inattentive mind can comprehend, but fulfilling the roles of information broker or starship salesman is not amongst those."

Rayf nodded, conceding the point. "True. But one of your responsibilities is monitoring all starship traffic in and out of the slips, and keeping a copy of the logs and docking information archived at Traffic Control, just in case Epsis needs to know exactly who's in Nadir at any given time. That is on the list, right?"

Puzell was actively scowling now. Foyi could feel his rising ire like a hot splash of liquid across the tips of her _lekku._ "On _my_ list, yes, but that is no concern of yours, especially considering you're merely a freelancer for us on an occasional basis. If you actually committed to working with Epsis, you might be able to pull a little more weight around here. But you haven't, so you don't. I'm not letting you into the security footage or the docking records, Moors. I don't care what you need them for, it's not going to happen."

Foyi stepped closer to the desk, until she loomed over the Duros. She had dipped into the deep, black, frigid waters again, the Dark Side rising and churning within her. Images of Lido suffering and dying beneath her fists swam into the forefront of her mind, but she feared them no longer. Instead, she relished the memories, steeped herself in them, allowing herself to bathe in the unnatural but not wholly unwelcome bloodlust. Her fists clenched at her side, and she opened her mouth to speak, but Rayf's hand had reached out, his fingers contacting her wrist with a gentle brush. She could feel warmer, more soothing waters suffusing her form. Rayf was attempting to calm her, to grant her peace and halt any rash actions she might take.

Puzell, for his part, was not Force-sensitive, so he only saw an angry Twi'lek glowering at him, and not only was he not the least bit intimidated, but he was profoundly unimpressed. His scowl met Foyi's regard, then shifted to Rayf beside her. "This is your muscle, Moors? _This_ is what you think'll get me to help you out with something you know I refuse to do? You're more pathetic than I remember, Moors."

Rayf's grin did not leave his face, neither did the teasing mirth leave his voice. "Well, I'm about to get a lot more pathetic, 'cause I'm calling in that favor you owe me."

Puzell's face blanched, and the Duros elicited a lengthy groan. "You're not serious."

"Deadly. You owe me, and I'm collecting. All we need is some footage and some names, and we'll be on our way."

Puzell glared at him, then sullenly turned to his terminal and began tapping away at the keys. He swung around in his chair, his emerald index finger stabbing at Rayf sharply. "Fine. I'll do this for you and your 'cousin', Rayf, but after this, I owe you nothing. You hear me? We're square."

Rayf gave him an innocent grin. "Of course, Puzell. I wouldn't have it any other way."

The Duros turned to his terminal again, and he replied without facing them. "What ship are you looking for?"

Foyi replied without hesitation. "It's a Maka-Eekai L4000 Transport with Anjiliac markings. Looks like it's seen a lot of action. Its crew consisted of Houks, Nikto, and Weequay mostly, and its cargo was at least one slave. A Twi'lek female, fourteen years of age."

If Puzell was perturbed by the fact that there were slavers' ships moving in and out of Point Nadir, he did not show it. He scrolled through several options and menus on his screen, then turned the screen so that Foyi and Rayf could see. They were looking at different log entries and clips of security footage from the holocams established in every single hangar in the Slips. He scrolled down, then highlighted one section of footage, which maximized the screen, and showed a somewhat grainy, muted recording of a L4000 Transport sliding into a hangar bay not unlike the one that Ray had landed _The Flamusfracta_ in, though this one was considerably larger, and housed more than one vessel the Transport's size. As they watched, the starship's boarding ramp lowered and disgorged several Weequay, Houks, and Nikto, as well as a small host of members of other species bound in a chain of connected manacles and stun collars. Foyi leaned over the desk until her nose was within centimeters of the screen. The feed was full of static and heavily pixellated, but she was certain that one of the prisoners was a Twi'lek female, and judging by her build and height, one who had not reached maturity yet. Her eyes scanned the rest of the feed, taking in the ship and what she could make out of its crewmates. She took a step back, finding it difficult to breathe, but somehow keeping her voice steady. "That's it. That's the ship we're looking for."

Puzell seemed bored with the development, or at least apathetic. He maneuvered the cursor to another section of the screen, selected an option from a menu, and a list of numbers and letters appeared, chronicling a complex set of docking registration information. When he spoke, he did so in a flat monotone. "The ship's name is the _Nexu's Grin_ , registered under a Captain...Ak-Vir Vri." He glanced at both Rayf and Foyi, and the green shade of his cheeks had gone a tad gray. "You do realize who Vri is, right? He's one of Zietta's top slavers and slavehunters."

"Is he and his crew still here?" came Foyi's snappy reply, unconcerned with who the bastard that stole her sister was or who he was connected to. "Where'd they take the slaves?"

Puzell exited the menus he had selected and turned to face her, his expression brooking no argument to his next statement. "In answer to your first question, yes, they are still here. And in answer to your second, I've no idea, nor is it any of my business. I've already given you two far more than I should have, and I'm not going to dig any deeper into the Anjiliacs' dealings. You two want to poke the Hutt, be my guest, but don't drag me down into your lunacy."

Rayf stood, straightening his tunic as he did so. "Well, you've been a great help, Puzell. We'll be certain to come back to you if we need any more assistance, okay?"

Puzell pointed a stern finger at the door. "I don't owe you anything anymore, Moors. Get out of my office."

* * *

As Rayf and Foyi left the Epsis command center, Foyi's entire frame was practically vibrating with tension and excitement. She walked past the Ubese guarding the door without even registering his—or hers, she could never tell—presence, her eyes snapping back and forth, as if she would see Tama being led down the wide tunnel she was in before her eyes. The resolution on the security holo had been horribly grainy and indistinct, but she had definitely seen Twi'leks amongst the chain of slaves led off the ship she now knew to be the _Nexu's Grin_ , and one of them had matched Tama's exact build and gait. It had to be her. She was here, perhaps not far away. All she had to do was find her, save her, take her home.

A dark thought swam up to her conscious mind, adding an action to her impromptu mental list, one that was not entirely unwelcome. _And make Ak-vir Vri and his thugs pay. Make_ all _the Anjiliacs pay._

She was even now contemplating the thought of her discblade entering the Weequay captain's forehead when Rayf came to her side, running an uncertain hand through his thinning hair. She snapped out of her cold reverie and thoughts of bloody vengeance, and refocused on where she was, the goal before her: her sister's location and safety. Rayf had a sly grin on his face, though it did not quite reach his eyes, which evoked more than a modicum of worry. "Well, Puzell was even more helpful than I thought he would be. I didn't even expect to get that much out of him, despite what he owed me."

"What did he owe you?"

"Oh, just his life. I saved him from getting shot under the table at Under The Table."

Foyi wrinkled her brow, running his words through her mind again to make certain she had actually heard what it had sounded like. "Wait, what?"

"Under The Table. It's one of the bars in Point Nadir. Kind of a reference to the three most common things that occur under tables at that establishment. Drinking oneself under the table, making illicit dealings, and getting shot under the table, in no particular order or priority, mind you. I made sure someone who thought it a good idea to murder an Epsis underboss did not get the chance, and Puzell owed me for that...until today. Which means if we end up needing any more help while we're here, he'd probably space us before getting involved anymore than he already is. So...we're on our own from here."

"Then let's find Tama."

"How? Can you still sense her?"

Foyi concentrated for a moment, her mind seemingly leaving her body as she tentatively expanded her consciousness into the jumbled sea of sensation and feeling. After a moment, she shook her head. "I...I can't get a fix on her. I can feel her presence, but as if from far away, more like an...echo, rather than a voice. Does that make sense?"

Rayf nodded. "Most beings leave some sort of impression in the Force no matter where they go, whether they are currently in that spot or not. It could be...that she's no longer in Nadir..."

Foyi cursed under her breath. She cast a hopeful glance up at Rayf. "Could she be locked up somewhere? Maybe held wherever the slave market in this comet is?"

Rayf shrugged. "Or she could be in the hold of some starship already halfway across the galaxy." Foyi's expression became a grimace of anger and despair, but Rayf continued. "But you know who would know?"

Foyi's fingers curled into fists so tight, her trimmed fingernails cut small, bloody grooves into her palm. "Ak-vir Vri."

"Exactly. Puzell said Vri and his crew were still here, which means they either didn't land very long ago, or don't have any immediate concerns with which to occupy themselves. And in my opinion, ship crews that are in port and listless typically spend most of their time around the cantinas."

"Then let's check every cantina in this lousy ball of dirt and knock heads until someone tells us how to find Ak-vir Vri."

Rayf could not suppress a grin. He realized, probably more so than Foyi did, that going from bar to bar roughing up anyone and everyone was not a particularly efficient or safe way of gaining information. But considering the majority of those beings likely to be in these cantinas were slavers, mercenaries, murderers, rapists, and all manner of other lowlifes, he would not have any hard feelings putting a scare or two into them. His hand unconsciously slid closer to the pieces of his wan-shen on his belt, and he said, "Let's go find us a Weequay _sleemo_ then."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Tama hovered in the midst of the pliable and amorphous boundary between awareness and the null void of unconsciousness for what seemed like weeks on end, never fully immersed in either. Her world had become a kaleidoscope of disjointed images and colors, interspersed with periods of darkness and mind-bending stretches of altered reality that could only be dreams and nightmares. When she woke, it was only temporarily, and she was never able to gain enough awareness that she registered anything of note, or remembered specific details. A small, distant voice in her head kept reminding her to catalogue and record everything, to look for clues and information that would prove advantageous in her predicament. But the drugs still coursing through her veins prevented her from this self-assigned mission, plunging her into restless sleep.

Tama only began to notice a change slowly, barely registering in her consciousness as her wakeful mind began to reassert itself. Her mind was finally becoming aware of itself over her faculties as her body processed the last of the drugs that coursed through her internal systems. The periods of awareness grew longer in duration, and she began to remember actual sights, sounds, and smells.

Eventually, she became aware enough of her surroundings to find herself in a dim, musty room, the atmosphere moist, so humid it felt like a warm, sticky cloth on her skin. She was lying on her side, her neck experiencing great pain along the vertebrae and the tendons, indicating that her head had been lying at an awkward angle for several hours, at least. She blinked her eyes rapidly and slowly curled inward, assuming a fetal position as her stomach began to twist and knot itself, threatening to rebel and disgorge whatever she had last eaten. She lay like that for tedious, lengthy moments, readjusting to the sensations of being awake, gritting her teeth at the soreness and pain she felt undulating within her body. It started to fade as she lay there, whimpering slightly, slowly feeling more assured of herself, more comfortable in her own skin.

Tama forced herself into a sitting position slowly, then finally got to her feet. Vertigo struck her immediately, and she dropped to one knee, nearly regurgitating once more, but forcing herself through the disorientation and illness. She struggled to her feet again, and stood still for a moment, allowing herself time to take in her new and unfamiliar surroundings. She was in a dark, dank room of unknown purpose, devoid of furniture, accoutrements, or windows. The architecture suggested Clone Wars-era prefab structure, though she could not begin to give an actual approximation of its age. A single door was the only exit or entrance to the room, and the dark walls were spattered and plastered with healthy colonies of mold. Above her head was a series of moldering pipes, one of which had a hairline fracture in the seals around one of its couplings, causing a steady drip of water to fall to the floor, forming a sizable puddle on the metal beneath her feet, which was smeared with mud and rotting fungal matter.

Tama shook her head multiple times to clear her vision, initially believing her surroundings to be another dream. But when the supposed illusion did not go away, and the clarity of her awareness only increased, she decided to accept the room she was housed within as reality. She strode tentatively to the door and looked for an access panel or latch with which she might open the barrier. But there was none to be found. Banging and pushing on the door yielded no positive results, either. She even called for help, called for anyone who might be beyond the uncaring metal surface, but no one answered.

Tama felt fear creeping through her gut, worming its way into her esophagus and drawing her breath into ragged gasps. She appeared to be a prisoner, but of who, or where, she could not say. There were no vibrations in the walls or low hums on the periphery of her hearing, so she doubted that she was still aboard the starship she had been taken to by her kidnappers. So she was probably on a planet or moon of some sort, one that had a humid, moisture-laden atmosphere in the region her cell was located, one that experienced an abundant amount of fungal growth. She could already feel her sinuses clogging with the close, cloying air and the spores that were thick about the room, and she inevitably sneezed. She knew these were important clues as to where in the galaxy she was located, but all her knowledge regarding the countless worlds that existed in the galaxy had come from the unreliable, half-inebriated tales of spacers and smugglers. She could no more reliably identify her present location than she could walk through the solid door.

Time passed slowly for Tama in the dim, cramped cell, long stretches of empty time only separated by brief, fitful periods of sleep. She had no sense of day or night, though she knew that days must be passing her by. The only light in the cell was a small, red glow panel set above the door, which intermittently dimmed or flashed, seemingly at random, as if its power supply was unstable. The dilapidated state of the room suggested it had not seen frequent use in a long time; she was surprised there was anything electronic still functioning at all. She passed the time mostly pacing around her cell, memorizing every detail of its form and structure, noting the daily differences in the mold colonies' conquest of all available wall space. The fungi were akin to a clock for her, in place of standard chronometers, but for all she knew, the mold spread in mere minutes, not a day at a time, which was the assumption she was operating on.

By what she assumed to be the third day, she was weak enough she could barely stand. She had not had food in at least that amount of time. Her only source of water was the steadily dripping droplets from the rusty, mouldering pipe above her head. the heady, rank scents exuded by the mold in the room were being overtaken by the stench of her own urine and defecation, though her extensive lack of food had made certain that her digestive processes had slowed to near nonexistence. There was a horrible, hollow feeling that began in her stomach and was steadily spreading out throughout her body. That "night", instead of sleeping, she began practicing the deep, meditative trance that Foyi had taught her in one of their many training sessions. This Force ability would allow her to achieve something similar to the regenerative benefits of sleep, as well as spread the healing warmth of the Living Force to her very extremities. Her hunger and thirst diminished, while the lingering pain and dull ache in her muscles began to fade. She felt herself fall into the Force, turning her enhanced senses inward, falling deeper within herself and the comforting expanse that was the Force beyond her, allowing it to fill her with peace, calm, and contentedness, even in her untenable position.

She lost track of time's passage. The pain in her sinuses and the odors in her nostrils faded as the sound of the infernal consistency of dripping water disappeared. Slowly, gently, she became one with the Force, floating free in the blissful sensation of subconscious detachment. And as the Force reached into her, she reached out with it, expanding her conscious mind past her mortal shell, reaching out to taste, to touch the Force and all its aspects, to find its unique signature upon this unknown world.

Tama nearly tumbled from her meditative state when the full brunt of the Force and its unique flavors and sensations struck her fully in the face. The world she was on was teeming with life, the presences of thousands of unknown creatures radiating like bright constellations on a background of blackness, for the Force felt...ill, twisted, warped. She felt the Dark Side in a thousand nattering whispers, felt its cold wind on her face, its thick, slimy fingers caressing her skin, tempting her with dark and forbidden pleasures and powers she could experience if she only gave up her soul. The Light was present as well, but it was small, beaten, cowering before the onslaught of the Dark Side's tempest, roaring across the world, soaking and corrupting everything that stayed too long in its shadow. Even the miniature lights that represented the presences of the creatures that walked the world's surface blinked and fluctuated in her extrasensory perception, as if the darkness was constantly assaulting their beings, trying to crush the lights of Life. But the majority of these presences were already corrupted, their existences scarred and warped by the Dark Side's infernal touch, only adding to the power of the brooding storm.

Tama snapped out of her meditative trance, shivering despite the stifling humidity in the cell. She closed herself off from the Force in fear of being discovered, or alerting the attention of a hostile presence capable of sensing her own Force signature. But the overwhelming darkness she had felt enveloping the world had not come from a single source, but rather from a countless multitude, as if the Dark Side was everywhere and everything on this world. Instead of creating a stifling, intelligent malevolence, however, the world around her merely felt injured and diseased, as if it had suffered a mortal wound in its recent past, and was slowly succumbing to it. It was one of the most horrible feelings she had ever experienced, and it took her several hours before she was able to calm herself enough to try and attempt another healing trance. And this one she kept confined to herself, drawing the Force about her like a cloak and hiding within its embrace.

* * *

Tama had completely lost track of time or sensation beyond herself and her immediate, physical presence when she was aroused from her deep, relatively peaceful meditation by what sounded like a whisper or intermediate breath of wind. Awareness came to her immediately, and she felt as though she were no longer alone, even though there was no one else in her cell, and no unique presences in the Force that she could sense within the few meters around her. She blinked, ignoring the hungry grumbling and gnawing of her stomach, as if the organ were attempting to consume itself for want of sustenance. Tama stood, much more sure on her feet than she had been in days, the soreness in her limbs that had remained in one position for countless hours gone. She crept quietly to the door and pressed her ear against the grimy metal, certain she had heard a voice, perhaps articulate words or phrases. She listened for several long, agonizing moments, but heard nothing but the shrill sound of a wind, a distant hissing through a confined space, and the clicks and clangs of metal creaking and settling in its inevitable loss to the overwhelming conquest of erosion. Perplexed, Tama stepped away from the door and hobbled about the perimeter of her cell once more, pausing at regular intervals to listen for any noises leaking through the walls. She had similar results, and no further answers.

Tama shook her head and rubbed her eyes. She had never been awake for days on end, though she knew that malnutrition and improper rest was a potent combination for the degradation of one's mental state and grasp on reality. Perhaps she was merely hearing things. Though how she could hear anything when she had so deadened her senses to the world was beyond her. Maybe her connection to the Force was growing stronger through this tribulation.

And maybe she was just going crazy.

Tama curled in the corner farthest from the one she had designated as the spot to relieve herself, though the smell barely registered with her anymore, so clogged by spores and mucus were her olfactory passageways. She closed her eyes, willing her breathing to slow to a steady, even pace, her heart to settle to a consistent, slowing beat. She was already hovering on the edge of blissful sleep when the whisper came again, shocking her awake once more. But this time, she heard it clearly, not as a sound, but rather a voice in her head, a deep, guttural tone resonating like a shipboard klaxon through her mind. It said one word, repeated with various inflections and syllabic stress. It took her a moment to recognize the word, and when she did, she felt the blood in her veins turn to ice.

 _Tamam'buma. Tama. Tama. Taaammmmaaaa._

Tama rose to a sitting position, staring out at the dim confines of her cell, at the darkness that now seemed so much closer and grasping than it had moments before. She licked her lips, fear fluttering through her chest, too afraid to respond. But the voice was insistent; it would not be ignored. _Tama. Tama. Taaama._

"What do you want?" Tama asked aloud, her voice shockingly loud in the normally quiet cell. She swallowed past a clump of mucus stuck in her throat. "Who—who are you?"

 _I am sin in skin, birthed in fire and blood. Savior of the fruits of loins, traveler of the Deep Black. Black and burnt on the inside, cold and lost on the outside. What does it matter? It doesn't understand, how could it? Tama's sins are not yet realized, but we'll see, yes we will. We all will. Tama, Tama. Pretty Tama. Evil Tama. Tired Tama. How does it feel; I know not. Doesn't matter, why should it?_

Tama tried to follow along with the rambling sentences, but it was as if the voice were speaking of knowledge only known to itself, and she could only hear its words out of context. Not that she actually wanted to hear the words; they made her feel uncomfortable to say the least, dirty and violated to hear the voice slithering through her head and thoughts like a dianoga's tentacles. And yet, a part of her wanted to maintain and develop whatever relationship she might have with this voice. It was the first meaningful social contact she had experienced in over a week, and despite that short amount of time, she found herself starved for the presence of others.

The thought occurred to her that her psyche had merely snapped, and she was holding a conversation with the insane portion of her mind. But this thought did not deter her from attempting to answer the irrational, disjointed words uttered by the voice. "Wh—Where am I? What is this place? Why...am I here?"

 _This is your crucible, Tama._

Tama was momentarily taken aback by the short, straight-forward response. She had been expecting another rambling discourse of barely coherent speech. She found herself standing, her gaze moving from ceiling to floor to walls, though she found no sign of the voice's owner. "What do you mean, 'crucible'? Is this some kind of sick test? Some kind of _game_? Does this amuse you?!"

There was a discordant flash of pain along her temples, and she realized the voice had given its version of a psychic chuckle. _Tama, Tama, you have yet to realize. It is well, do not worry, I am not angry with your confusion. You have a sin, an evil growing within you like drochs skittering and dancing beneath the skin, covering you from head to toe like a feasting, slurping Mikan. It is so ripe, rotten, smelly to me I can almost taste it, and it makes me shudder, makes me cringe. Oh please, we don't want to do it, it's too terrible, not again...Forgive me, forgive me, it did not mean it, it wasn't what we wanted...You needn't feel bad, but you must recognize. Tama, you are diseased, infected, with depravity and pustular darkness, like all your kind, and the only way you must recognize it is through trial and tribulation. Only through pain can the soul be cleansed and purified. It must know now, yes? Oh, it will be difficult and lengthy, there may not be any survivors._

Tama felt her heart hammering in her chest. The voice was clearly mad, and whoever it belonged to obviously did not have her best interests at heart. She was unable to identify the creatures or places the voice had been referring to when discussing her "inner evil", which she took as a sign that the voice was not from her own mind, and therefore, she was still sane. For now. This was not an entirely comforting thought, though, for it did not serve to explain her current situation, or the actual reason for why she had been brought and deposited here in this dank cell. The possibility that the voice that so addressed and tormented her may have something to do with the stifling overabundance of the Dark Side had not eluded her frantic thoughts. Perhaps she was speaking to an unseen Force spirit allied with the Dark Side. Perhaps she was speaking to the Dark Side itself. She knew very little about the darker aspects of the Force, and thus, anything regarding the Dark Side could be possible and must be considered.

More rational thoughts finally surfaced from the broiling sea of fear in her mind, and she grimaced at herself for letting her emotions and exhaustion overrule her logical thinking. No, she had been taken by slavers and mercenaries, thugs with blasters and ships, working in illicit trades with criminals. Whoever the voice belonged to had to be flesh and blood, a being with nefarious purposes, but not some ancient Sith alchemist or cacodemon from myth and legend. She knew little about the majority of sentient species that populated the galaxy, but the stories she had gleaned from Pash and others had featured telepaths and mind-readers and aliens with all manner of abilities. Most likely, a being with such abilities was what she faced now in the disembodies speaker. She recognized this as a fear tactic, to keep her cowering and off-balance, just as the days of isolation and starvation had been meant to make her slump into hopeless despair and mind-numbing terror.

With a clearer, more conscious mindset, she focused on the voice again, which seemed to be humming inside her head. "What are you even talking about? What evil? And who are you to judge me?"

 _I am your Savior, Tama. I see your sins past, your sins to come. You are unclean, savage, unworthy, unwashed. I will make you whole, release your pain and your darkness. You will be one of the few beings in the entire universe that could claim to be pure in body, mind, and soul._

Tama felt the need to explain herself, her mind wracking her memories for everything in her past that could be considered a sin. Her _lekku_ twitched as her deepest and earlier memories were dredged out of the depths of the half-remembered past, but she stopped herself, for she feared that the voice in her head could probably read her thoughts as well, most likely had already done so for some time now. She steeled her mind, calling upon the Force to solidify her mental defenses, like durasteel walls rising to surround her despite her exhausted state. Anger and indignation bolstered those walls; she had no need to justify herself to her captor.

 _Defiance,_ the voice hissed through her mind, like a kouhun through her frontal lobe. _Very expected, solid walls, yes. You are like so many, thinking yourself not truly in need of salvation, that you are no worse than most others. Truth, lies, everywhere. You will learn truth, small Tama. You will understand the nature of your own evil, and when the skin has finally been peeled back and you see your sins for the ugly beast they are, you will beg me to save you._ And with the final phrase, a heady pressure in her head was finally relieved. Tama knew not how she knew, but she realized that the voice was "gone". Whether that meant the speaker had moved out of range of her, or was no longer interested in speaking to her, she had no clue. But perhaps she would experience some peace and quiet now. At least, as much as she could experience in the hellish conditions she had found herself in.

Tama spent the next hour or so either pacing about the cell, or stretching out tentatively with her senses to try and pinpoint the source of the voice that had violated the sanctity of her mind, amongst the countless presences upon the world. She made little headway with this, however, as the Dark Side, so thick and virulent it suffused the very atmosphere, made all of her senses cloudy and indistinct. She could barely tell anything about the presences she felt, nor distinguish particular ones from the dark morass that seemed to hover over everything. And so hours became a day, and she heard no more from the voice that day.

Until she lay herself down to sleep. And then the voice was back, muttering and chatting incoherently in her thoughts, sometimes speaking long monologues in an alien language, sometimes just making sounds and gibberish, as if it were in love with hearing itself speak. And try as she might, she could not block out the sound of its incessant, insane chatter, as the voice existed only in her head, and thus had no audio quality that could be blocked or muted.

Tama found no sleep that night, sitting against one of the walls of her cell, trying to remember happier times with her sister, holding onto that shred of comfort. But it was like holding a candle up to ward the falling night, and the darkness threatened to overtake it completely.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Point Nadir turned out to be even more massive and varied than Foyi had initially expected of the unassuming comet. Rayf led her through the winding tunnels opening into enormous and heavily-occupied caverns as they followed the trail their unwilling "informant" had prescribed for them, leading to a tavern named "The Cruelest Cut". Foyi definitely did not like the sound of any place with such a name, but she was not surprised scum like Ak-vir Vri would spend time in such a disreputable place, judging by what little Rayf had told her regarding the cantina.

They were passing through a section of the spaceport locally known as the Trade District, which geographically was not far from the Slips, where the hangars were located. Thus, the majority of edifices that called this district home were warehouses and storage sites for cargo pulled from incoming starships, or waiting for their own voyages across the stars. The warehouses varied in size and complexity depending on who owned them, with those run by the Anjiliac Clan obvious in their heavy, durasteel structures and large blast doors, guarded by several heavily-armed guards, most of whom were Houks. There was not an extensive amount of pedestrian traffic, as was prevalent in more densely populated sections of the port, though the streets were wide and kept relatively clean of debris, offal, and waste. Occasional landspeeders and cargo transports driven by humanoids or droids trundled through the streets, laden with cargo to be stored or offloaded through the winding tunnels that led back to the Slips. The guards stationed at each warehouse and storage container eyed the pair suspiciously as they passed within view of the streetlamps, though neither the Twi'lek or human dared stride close enough to initiate a conversation. No doubt some of their activities since arriving in Point Nadir were already gaining them attention they could do without, as they had had to rough up more than a few thugs in order to track down the habitual recreational places of Captain Vri and his crew. And though no one had stopped them or otherwise accosted them, neither Foyi nor Rayf wished to create any altercations that would further slow their advance upon their target.

They crossed the Trade District, the only difficulty in their trek being nearly run over by an airspeeder driven by a Rodian who appeared less than sober. The Rodian chattered some angry curses at them in Huttese, and continued across the street, slowing the vehicle too late and sliding into the door of a warehouse hard enough to crumple one of its repulsor pads. The guards standing watch at that warehouse dived out of the way, then picked themselves up and began a shouting match with the Rodian. As Rayf hurried past without even noting the altercation, Foyi looked back over her shoulder long enough to see the Rodian shout something the guards found most disagreeable, judging by the fact that an immensely muscular Nautolan hauled him bodily from the speeder's seat and threw him on the ground, where the other guards proceeded in clubbing him with the stocks of their blaster rifles. She felt the briefest inclination, born of her Zeison Sha training, to intervene and help the outnumbered Rodian. But her fear for her sister overrode her momentary concern for the Rodian. _Besides_ , came the miniscule voice of darkness in the recesses of her mind. _The_ murglak _nearly ran you over and was vapebrained enough to run into a building instead of stopping. He deserves it_.

The warehouses and storage containers of the Trade District gave way to an expansive, roughly-hewn wall of stone, honeycombed with openings and passageways, rising above and to either side of them in rough tiers, denoting a set of interior levels. There was more pedestrian traffic on this end of the district, humanoids and sentient beings walking in and out of the infrequent openings, like Killiks entering and exiting their hive. The beings here were a whole menagerie of species, though there were marked similarities between all of them Foyi noted immediately. Most of them wore armor that was as encompassing as possible without fully sacrificing range of motion; the most impressive of these were the pair of Mandalorians that walked through the opening before her and Rayf, not even bothering to turn their heads to regard the human and Twi'lek. Everyone around this area was armed with entire arrays of weaponry, usually sporting multiple blaster pistols, carbines, and rifles, as well as a menagerie of melee weapons, from ryyk blades to vibroswords to force pikes. And no one was traveling alone; they were in small groups ranging from a pair to a dozen or more, as if the region ahead was constantly being claimed and counterclaimed by every smalltime gang that existed on the comet.

Rayf paused outside one of the openings, his head on a swivel as he reestablished his bearings. Foyi eased up beside him, her hand unconsciously reaching for the weapons strapped across her back. She could feel the tension in this place, the echoes of dark deeds and violent deaths so palpable, she swore she tasted blood on the back of her tongue. Rayf looked down at her with a grim but determined expression on his face. "Well...this is where The Cruelest Cut is. In The Nest."

"What's 'The Nest'?"

"It's where all the mercenaries, pirates, slavers, assassins, war criminals, and other people you don't want to meet on a street in broad daylight go, looking for work and recreation. It's probably the single most dangerous place in all Point Nadir."

As if to accentuate his assertion, they heard blasterfire from the tunnel opening ahead of them, echoing as if from a great distance. The blasterfire came in a roar of short, staccato bursts that abruptly ended. There was a scream of someone in pain, yelling incoherently from the agony of a mortal wound, which was silenced by a single, final blaster shot. Foyi listened for a few moments more, and looked back up at Rayf. "Then we'll just be extra careful."

Rayf scoffed. "Force preserve us..." he muttered in response. Foyi cast him a wry grin and walked past her human companion, bravely being the first to step through the threshold of that yawning, dark opening. Rayf followed shortly behind, maneuvering beside her that he might better direct their passage through the dark, claustrophobic tunnels beyond. Foyi had the impression that she had entered the burrow or underground colony of large, digging creatures, the tunnels having no intelligent structure or organization readily apparent. They twisted back in on themselves, opening into intersections with dozens of different routes to take, or meandering on winding paths, only to lead back to where the tunnel originally diverged. Once again, Foyi found herself at a loss concerning navigation, but Rayf seemed to inherently know where they were going, as if he had been born here, and lived here all his life. They passed a pair of bodies lying in one tunnel, an Anzati and an Aqualish prostrate in pools of their own coagulating blood, their bodies nearly unrecognizable due to the prevalence of blaster burns. As with the others who roamed the tunnels on matters of their own, the pair ignored the corpses, though Foyi would be dishonest with herself if she pretended that the carnage did not unsettle her.

They passed dozens of doors, some opening into other tunnels, some into small alcoves and warrens with jagged walls, others being the portals into large chambers holding businesses and establishments. Most of these businesses belonged to the shady side of moneymaking; Foyi saw advertising for arms dealers, spice peddlers, bounty offices, and private army contractors. She was careful not to linger or stare too long at any of the businesses they passed, as well as the armed travelers in the dim confines. The air was charged with tension, as if the very walls had violent tendencies they barely kept in check.

Suddenly, Rayf halted in front of one of the doorways, the opening containing no door of any kind. A flickering holo sign above the door spelled out the establishment's name in Aurebesh and Huttese characters, but Foyi did not need to read the sign to know they had arrived at their destination. Without further ado, the two of them stepped into the cantina's dark confines, and Foyi could not suppress a gasp as she stepped through the door, as The Cruelest Cut was the largest and most overwhelming tavern she had ever set foot into. Before them, the floor sloped down in a short set of stairs cut roughly into the stone at their feet, leading down into the main area of the cantina, which held dozens of tables, some of which were specially designed for dejarik, sabacc, and other games of skill and chance. In the center of it all stood a bar with a dizzying array of alcoholic beverages from all corners of the galaxy, staffed by a trio of Twi'lek women garbed in sleek, shimmersilk dresses that exposed large amounts of cleavage and thighs. They smiled, giggled, and chattered endlessly with customers as they manipulated a gleaming automixer. Along the back wall, screens and holograms displayed live broadcasts of the Circus Horrificus, bloody gladiatorial duels in the Cauldron on Rattatak, and elaborate arena executions on Geonosis. There were stairs along the outer walls, leading up to a second story which was little more than a balcony ringing the perimeter of the main room, and several tunnels in the back led off into other rooms that were part of the cantina complex. Up near the towering ceiling, she also glimpsed several booths with one-way glass windows, allowing the unseen occupants to view the entire cantina floor from their lofty positions. The ululations of drunken shouts and off-tune shanties blended with the sound of fist striking flesh and bone, as well as the hyperactive commentary coming from the livefeeds at the back of the room. The smell of burning spice, spilled alcohol, alien sweat, urine, and ozone mixed with the wafting trails of smoke and odors that drifted through the room. The sights, sounds, and smells were nearly overwhelming, and she found herself standing still for a moment as she tried to process The Cruelest Cut.

A Wookiee with two bowcasters slung across his back and a ryyk blade at his belt shoved past Rayf and Foyi, growling a vicious insult in Shyriiwook that Foyi did not understand the exact meaning of but got the general idea. She hurried down the stone steps after the Wookiee, Rayf beside her, and the pair slid into an unoccupied booth that still had a small assortment of used wrappers and empty glasses across its surface. In such a place as this, their continued anonymity and physical health would not benefit from standing in the way and being jostled by irritable and trigger-happy mercenaries just itching for a fight.

Rayf pulled out his personal comlink and holoprojector, and a tap of a few keys brought the hologram of the Weequay they were looking for, courtesy of a Snivvian they had left with a broken nose. The holo showed a man who was fit and tall, with a dangerous tilt to his stance that was apparent even when he was represented by a hologram a decimeter in height. He had a striped bandana across his forehead, scars on his nose, and a wampa pelt forming a sort of cape over his long jacket and tight pants. He was grinning in the holo, though the expression was predatory in nature, devoid of friendliness or mirth. Foyi could not help but feel revulsion, anger, and a niggling shred of hatred whenever she viewed the hologram. Rayf switched the holo off, as he had merely pulled it out to remind himself of the physical appearance of the being they were hunting. He looked surreptitiously over his shoulder at the shifting crowd of local toughs and interstellar ruffians, while Foyi was actively searching the crowd with her eyes, attempting to spot a single Weequay amongst dozens of specimens of that species and others. Foyi gave an impatient growl and rubbed her eyes, temporarily reminded that she had hardly slept at all in nearly a week. "There's so many...this is gonna take awhile to find him. Let's go 'ask' someone where Vri is."

Rayf motioned for the perturbed Twi'lek to sit back down. He dropped his voice low enough that only she could hear. "This isn't the place to be knocking heads, as we're much more likely to to get our teeth bashed in. Or miss a few limbs or vital organs. _Everyone_ in here is looking for a fight, and while some are content to watch, a lot more are perfectly happy to get involved in one personally." He looked back over his shoulder again, toward the back of the room, where the faint noises of cheers, shouts, and whoops could be heard. "I suggest checking out the fight pits. He's probably watching one of the gladiator death duels in the other rooms."

Foyi craned her neck to get a better view of the circular openings along the furthest wall, though she could see nothing through their passageways in the dim light and distance. She reached out with her feelings, her senses, attempting to connect to Tama, fearful that it was for the gladiatorial arenas and the bloodthirsty crowds that her sister had been drug from her home on Yanibar. But she did not feel a hint of Tama's presence, though the confusing morass of Force signatures seeped in rage, deadly intent, and desperation could definitely be considered heady and disorienting. Not wishing to wait around any longer than necessary, Foyi pushed herself away from the booth, standing and winding her way through the crowd shifting about the floor, her purposeful stride carrying her to the farthest wall. Rayf hurried to catch up, but Foyi needed no direction to find the gladiatorial pits; she could practically taste the blood being spilled from the tunnel the farthest to the left. The tunnel wound back and forth for ten meters or so, tiny glowstrips in the ceiling providing an eerie illumination. The tunnel opened into another large room, constructed similarly to the main room of the cantina, with a second-floor balcony ringing the amorphous cavern, looking down upon the central area. In the center of the floor was a sizable pit, about ten to fifteen meters in diameter and five meters deep, its depth and the crowd arrayed around it preventing her from seeing inside. There was a dense, clamoring crowd standing and shoving about the pit's observation railing, screaming alternating words of encouragement or hatred. The room was cramped and cluttered, nearly jam-packed with beings all attempting to get close enough to view the fight below, which Foyi could only perceive as a series of pained growls and the thunderous emanations of heavy limbs or weapons striking unyielding flesh or armor.

Foyi let a pair of Sullustans eagerly shove past her, her gaze taking in all the sights and sentients present in a blur of faces and bodies. She looked up to the second-story balcony, which was similarly crowded but not as hectic, as those who were stationed above had a much more advantageous view of the fight occurring in the pit. Her eyes were inexorably drawn to the single largest occupant of that balcony, a being with a preferential seat on a protruding portion of the second-floor, which allowed him to be directly above the action below. Foyi had never actually seen a Hutt before, but the species was unmistakable, with the large, mollusk body and the grotesque, slouching face containing heavy-lidded, reptilian eyes and a massive slit for a mouth, as if someone had taken a jagged vibroblade to the creature's face. The Hutt sitting above, and presumably presiding over, the fight was a greenish-ochre in coloration, and his large, cruel eyes were so orange in hue, they were nearly scarlet. He lounged upon a dais that disappeared beneath his prodigious bulk, a bored expression on his face, as if the duel to the death occurring below him were just another tedious affair in his daily routine. Arrayed around him, some seated, some standing, were an assortment of hardened guards with cold, attentive expressions on their faces. They consisted of Houks and Nikto, accompanied by a snarling Barabel and a fearsome Wookie with black and gray fur. But even as Foyi's gaze searched their faces and reluctantly drug itself away from the spectacle of the Hutt, she saw a Weequay sitting with the rest of the Hutt's entourage, a Weequay whose appearance she already knew well, thanks to the holo supplied them.

Rayf came to her side and followed her gaze, which had gone dark with inner considerations of violence. He also stared at the Hutt for a moment, though his expression showed recognition rather than awe, but he soon sighted Ak-vir Vri sitting beside the giant mollusk and let a smile curve his lips. "There's our Weequay. Looks like someone's in good with Yuelo..."

Foyi began to stride for the stairs that would lead up to the second level, barely restraining herself from running to her destination, shoving sentients out of her way with rough hands or minor mental suggestions. But Rayf hurried to follow, and wrenched her to a stop with a firm grip on her upper arm, which caused her to whirl on him, her free hand closed in a fist. "Woah, slow down there, Foyi. I get it that you're new to the place and all, but you can't just walk up to a Hutt's private booth without an invite...or a blaster wound. Especially not during one of Yuelo's organized fights...he will skin us alive if we interrupt this."

Foyi gave him a perturbed look. "What happened to doing some good in the galaxy? To not letting the thugs and gangsters ruin life for people?"

Rayf threw up his hands in a defensive gesture. "Hey, nothing's changed, alright? But we can't help your sister if we're both dead."

Foyi looked off to the side, biting her lip, the roar of the crowd mixing with a shrill scream of pain from the pit below. Her angry, frustrated gaze was drawn upward, focusing on the hateful face of Ak-vir Vri. Weequay were difficult to read, but it did not take someone more familiar with the species of the galaxy to see the glee on his face as he alternated between shouts and jeers, his dark eyes fixated upon the blood match below. Unconsciously, she found herself sinking beneath the waves of the Force, not heeding the initial thoughts of hesitation when she found those waves both dark and insidious. She did not feel fear at the prospect of the Dark Side, so often lately lapping at the very perimeters of her consciousness. It was a simple thing to touch upon the revolting, simplistic mind of Ak-vir Vri, to feel his excitement at the brutality encouraged in the "sport" below him, his subconscious discomfort with being in such close proximity to the Hutt beside him, his errant fantasies regarding all the expensive, illicit, and lewd things he might spend his recently earned credits on. Foyi concentrated, but could find no stray thoughts, impressions, or images regarding Tama. He placed so little value on life that the faces of the slaves he had delivered and brokered only hours before had smeared themselves into vaguely humanoid blurs of half-remembered images. This blurry canvas of thought was intrinsically tied to the stacks of credits he visualized in much greater detail and importance; to him, the beings he had kidnapped and ruined the lives of merely translated into pure profit for himself. He was not even remotely concerned for the material wealth or wellbeing of his crew, which spoke to the kind of captain he was.

She had heard legends of Force powers employed by all forms of Force-users throughout the eons, powers that let them reach into the minds of foes to extract the darkest of sins, to fill their thoughts with horrendous visions of fear and insanity, to have them scream in imagined pain or practically beg to reveal confidential information. And while, as a Zeison Sha Warrior, her telepathic abilities were considerable, she had little practical usage in this aspect of the Force beyond mind tricks or communication. But there was always more to learn.

Foyi let go of her conscious self, sinking deep into the Force, concentrating her searching, heady waves upon Ak-Vir Vri. Instead of trying to force her consciousness upon him, to crack his brain open like a beelpop melon and spill its contents, Foyi slowly wormed her way into his thoughts, nestling in the area of little attention he paid to his own bodily functions. She placed a sensation of pressure in his groin, one that grew in accordance with her urging. Initially, Ak-vir's determination to focus on the gladiatorial duel below overrode the miniscule measure of attention he paid to the call of nature, but Foyi was insistent, sinking more deeply into the Force, penetrating Ak-vir's mind on a primal, base level and increasing the imaginary pressure to unbearable levels. Ak-vir's mind finally shifted its focus and darkened with anger, annoyance, and discomfort. The Twi'lek opened her eyes and stared up at the balcony, allowing herself a sadistic smile as Ak-vir levered himself out of the seat beside the Hutt, his mouth moving in unheard curses as he began to shove through the chairs and crowds toward the stairs that would lead back to the ground floor. Rayf gave her an impressed glance as the Weequay inevitably made his way within striking distance of the two Force-wielders. "I felt you using the Force on Vri...what'd you do to him?"

"He thinks that he really needs to pee," Foyi replied. She began to wend through the shifting, contorting masses, choosing a path that would bisect Ak-vir's own. The Weequay pounded down the stairs and past the pair of Houks who minded them, not even acknowledging the guards as he hurried for a tunnel in the back with a glowing sign marking it as the refresher. He growled as he shoved against the flow of the crowd, using one hand to clear the way, the other clutching his groin, certain that if he did not make it to the refreshers within the next few minutes, he would lose the contents of his bladder upon the floor. The Weequay stumbled into the refresher, which was currently unoccupied, and hobbled over to one of the stained urinals lining the rough-hewn stone wall. He paused there, opening his fly and sighing heavily as both Foyi and Rayf shoved through the door into the same room. Ak-vir did not even acknowledge their presences as he finished relieving himself, while Foyi waited patiently by the sink and sanitizer, and Rayf positioned himself beside the door. Ak-vir made a thick, phlegmy sound in the back of his throat and spat a wad of mucus into the urinal, then stepped away from it, readjusting his belt and striding straight toward the door. But he halted in the middle of the room as he saw the human standing in his way, and his dark gaze slid to regard Foyi's presence with surprise. His stare flicked back and forth between the two of them, suspicion growing in that regard. "What're you two doin' here? Wha', can't a man piss in peace in this galaxy anymore?"

"Ak-vir Vri?" Rayf asked, refusing to remove himself from in front of the door.

"That's being me, mate. You seem ta know me well, so if that's being the case, ya oughta know that I'm not a man ya wanna stand in between meself an' a good fight. Tha's what yer doin' right now, an' I'm having none o' it."

Foyi stepped closer to the Weequay, the fury in her eyes so fierce that Ak-vir took an inadvertent step back. "I don't care how big and scary you think you are, _sleemo_. You took my sister from me. You will give her back, or you will not leave this 'fresher alive."

Ak-vir's brow furrowed in murderous intent. "Look, _schutta_ , I don' have the slightest clue wha' yer gibberin' about. You wanna keep that pretty tongue where it belongs, I suggest ya stop waggin' it about an' making up all kinda lies."

Foyi's hand came up, the air itself seeming to twist as something unseen wrung it like a wet rag. Ak-vir suddenly gasped, his hands coming up to his throat, clawing at his collar as if it were strangling him. Foyi took another step forward, her gaze no longer brimming with anger; it had dropped into a cold, almost emotionless stare. Rayf bit his lower lip, unsure of how to react, but he forced himself to remain standing in front of the door, letting this play out, though he could feel the cold taint of the Dark Side beginning to waft off of Foyi's deceptively small frame. Ak-vir collapsed to his knees as the Force Choke restricted his oxygen, deep, wracking coughs erupting from his constricted trachea. Foyi finally drew within a meter of the slaver and dropped to a squat, her hand making a tighter pinching motion as her voice dropped to a cold, calm tone. "Ak-vir...it doesn't have to be this way, no matter how much I would prefer it. This can stop...right here. Right now. All you have to do is tell me what you did with my sister. Her name is Tama; you took her from her home on Yanibar. I'm certain you remember; it wasn't that long ago."

Ak-vir made a squeaking, wheezing sound as he attempted to say something. There was a slight popping noise in the base of his throat. Foyi craned her neck, moving her head closer to Ak-vir's flapping lips. "Oh? You have something worth saying now?" Her hand opened wider, and the pressure on Ak-vir's throat lessened enough for him to speak in a raspy, ragged voice.

"I know...nothin' what you speak of, brain-tails..."

Her fingers closed again, and Ak-vir gave a cry as the telekinetic fist on his throat clamped down with a sudden violence. His hands clawed at his throat and his chest as well, and he fell to the floor, convulsing, arcing his back in anguish. Foyi remained in her squatting position, the expression on her face no longer cold, but fierce, even elated. "You feel that pressure in your chest now? The pain? I can crush your heart with my _mind_ , Ak-vir. I can cause spasms in your lungs, create hemorrhaging in all your internal organs, your body cavity filling with blood as you slowly bloat and die. I can find so many creative ways for you to die, Ak-vir Vri, more than enough of them I'm sure you deserve." She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a frigid whisper. "You understand what I'm capable of? What I am?"

Ak-vir struggled through the lessened pressure on his throat, grunting over the pain of the Force knifing through his chest. "You're...you're a _Jeedai_..."

Foyi's expression twisted into a snarl as she lashed out at him through the Force, increasing the pressure on his throat, on his lungs. "I am _not_ a _Jedi_! You only wish I was a Jedi...'cause a Jedi is too weak to kill you right here, right now!"

"Foyi!," Rayf shouted, coming forward. He had had enough, and he would not let his newfound compatriot fall into the darkness. Her head whipped around so fast her _lekku_ spun about her shoulders like wings, her gaze so fierce and dark he worried for a moment that he would have to defend himself. He kept his voice calm, only marginally aware that his hand had subconsciously reached for the dagger-like tip of his wan-shen. "He can't tell us anything if he's dead. Or when he's choking. Please, Foyi, think of Tama; think of your sister. Don't cross that line."

Rayf could see the conflict on her features. Part of her wanted to utterly destroy Ak-vir right now, to sup on the vengeance she believed was owed her. But the other part realized the Weequay's importance to her sister's whereabouts and continued survival. And as Rayf watched, Ak-vir began to breathe somewhat easier, and the anger etching her features softened and faded. Ak-vir dropped to her knees and elbows, hacking and heaving as he gulped in large swallows of air. Foyi kept her voice hard and brittle, however, and her expression unyielding. "Are you ready to talk, scum?"

Ak-vir nodded slightly. "I...she's not worth alla this. I—I'll tell ya wha' ya wanna know..."

But before he could continue, the door at Rayf's back suddenly swung open, admitting a pair of Houks, the same two who had been guarding the staircase leading up to the Hutt's viewing platform. One of the Houks was already speaking halfway through the door, addressing the Weequay they had come to find. "Hey, Captain, Yuelo wants to know if your done _kriffing_ around in here. You're missing the fi-" His sentence trailed off when his small eyes took in the sight of Ak-vir lying on the floor, the Twi'lek girl squatting beside him, and the human standing, overseeing it all. There was a moment of tense, anticipatory silence between those gathered as each group evaluated the other.

Rayf was the first to spring into action, the dagger blade seemingly materializing in his hand, while his other hand reached behind him, and in a blur of motion, began reattaching the shaft parts to the blade, forming his wan-shen. Despite his unnatural speed, one of the Houks had already raised his blaster and fired, though with little actual aim, and the bolt went wide, burrowing into the stone on the far wall. Foyi was also springing into action, her discblade leaping from its sheathe and slapping into her palm as her hand came forward, hurling the weapon across the intervening space. The discblade embedded itself in the chest armor of the Houk who had been speaking, the force of the telekinetic throw blowing him back out of the door, though the thickness of the Houk's armor made it doubtful the discblade had penetrated far enough to score a fatal blow. Meanwhile, Rayf's weapon had already whirled about the Houk who had fired first in a multitude of slashes and stabs, some of which cut into the bindings and fasteners of his armor, exposing vulnerabilities for quick, precise, and devastating stabs. The Houk gave a bellow as blood spurted from the half-dozen wounds he had already suffered, but he remained standing, as if frozen stiff by his pain, before Rayf finished him off with a ferocious stab to the sternum.

But he had no time to rest, for the other Houk came barreling through the door, having pulled the discblade from his armor and chucking it awkwardly at Rayf. His wan-shen came up to intercept the wobbling missile, deflecting it behind him to the waiting hands of Foyi, but that was all he had time to accomplish before the Houk's full weight slammed into him. Rayf went flying against the edge of the sink, which dug into his spine painfully as the Houk fell upon him. His weapon, being a polearm, was too lengthy to be useful at such a close proximity, and his momentary surprise and the lack of oxygen in his lungs rendered him momentarily defenseless to the Houk's solid strike to Rayf's jaw with the stock of his blaster. Rayf blocked another punch, wheezing, and attempted to push the Houk off of him, but the alien's bulk was far too heavy and massive.

There was a sudden rippling of air, like a focused, gale-force wind. It struck the Houk in the side and lifted him bodily from his feet, where he was slammed into the wall beside the doorway. The Houk growled in shock as he attempted to regain his balance, but Foyi sped across the room faster than naturally powerful, her discblade clutched in hand. With a snarl of rage, the Force surging through her motions, Foyi leapt upon the Houk's sizable chest, clinging to him like an energy spider straddling a web of glitterstim. Her fist came down and slammed the discblade through the fleshy part between the Houk's throat and sternum, then ripped the blade away, opening an enormous wound in the humanoid's chest. She leapt back and to the floor, letting the Houk slide down the wall, plunging into the void of death.

Foyi turned back to the refresher's interior just in time to be bowled over by Ak-vir Vri, shoving her aside as he sprinted for the door. Foyi cried out as she hit the unyielding stone floor, though her cry was more in anger and denial as the Weequay fled the room. Rayf, still gasping, attempted to lunge forward and stop him in his tracks, but he was still disoriented and in pain from the heavy punches and strikes that he had received, and he inadvertently tripped over the Twi'lek. They tumbled together in a heap, but quickly extricated themselves, both springing to their feet, falling into the Force to regain their equilibrium. "He's...getting away!" Foyi gasped.

"I know!" Rayf yelled back.

Foyi rushed through the door and into the crowd beyond, into the thunderous din and shifting bodies. Ak-vir Vri was easy to identify, as he was not trying to be stealthy or blend in, having no compunctions about knocking beings over who were in his way, and generally causing a ruckus as he shoved, punched, and kicked his way through the crowd. There were already guards from the level above running down the stairs, looking about to see what the commotion was. A few of those guards saw the two of them emerging from the refresher, and fingers and blasters were leveled their way.

"Duck!" Rayf shouted a moment before the air filled with laserfire. Both he and Foyi dropped to the floor as screams erupted in the crowd, and bodies began to fall, either from beings similarly dodging for cover or receiving grievous wounds from stray blaster bolts. The cacophonous atmosphere took on another tone entirely, from exuberance to abject fear. Foyi and Rayf pressed themselves off the ground and scurried forward, keeping low as blaster bolts flew all about them, leaping or tripping over sprawled forms as they attempted to follow the path taken by the fleeing Weequay, which led them toward the door out of that section of the cantina. Foyi dived over a cowering Mon Calamari, her eyes never leaving Vri's retreating back. But her inattention to her immediate surroundings and details proved to be her downfall, for a female Devaronian suddenly rose in her path in an attempt to flee from the firezone. The Devaronian's slim form came into contact with Foyi's shins, and her momentum carried her up and over the woman, throwing Foyi into an uncontrollable somersault. She lost her grip on her discblade, felt her blasters spin off her back, and she was suddenly in open air, falling through space. She had no time to even consider how far her fall might be, or when she would hit the bottom of the drop from whence she had tumbled, before she fell hard on her side, blasting the wind from her lungs and shooting glistening lights and darkness through her vision.

Foyi came to awareness violently, as her body was slung across a smooth, wet floor to slam against a cool, metal wall. The impact of the fall had knocked her unconscious for only a moment, but something had woken her again by throwing her against another unyielding surface. She let out a gasp of pain, and instinctively dived into the Force, letting it take over her actions, reviving and rejuvenating her, giving her the strength needed to spring back to her feet. Her vision cleared enough to see a humanoid shape charging her, and only a stumbling sidestep saved her from being mashed against the wall behind her. She stumbled backward, more to gain space and an appraisal of her attacker than to regain her balance. The humanoid ran bodily into the wall hard enough to make the metal squeal, which would have severely injured any other average humanoid, but a quick visual assessment revealed this creature to be a Barabel. Foyi knew them by reputation alone, one which was no doubt earned, considering how truly formidable the being before her appeared. The Barabel was a hulking sentient with scaly musculature both slim and graceful in the way it rippled over his flesh, over two meters in length if he were to stand up straight. His large, bald, ridged head contained a protruding brow, casting shadows over his bloodshot, yellow eyes. His maw opened and closed as if chewing on something, his five centimeter fangs flecked with fresh blood, his thick tongue lolling. His powerful arms ended in club-like hands, the thick digits tipped with claws that slid in and out of the flesh. A heavy, segmented tail whipped back and forth behind him, and his clawed toes scratched grooves into the smooth tiles of the floor. His gray scales were mottle with crimson inflammation around his mouth and throat, and the sharp, jerky movements he made as he incessantly shifted his weight from one foot to the other reminded Foyi of someone high on spice.

Foyi's gaze took in her immediate surroundings, and she found herself enclosed by high walls of sheer metal, devoid of all handholds. There were four blast doors situated at equal intervals around the pit, and off to the side was the disemboweled remains of a Yinchorri. The sound of the screaming crowd still baffled her ears, but it was no longer coming from around her, but above her head.

Then it all clicked into place. She had fallen into the gladiator pit. And now she was trapped with a psychotic, drug-addled Barabel, completely unarmed.

It took her only a second or so to come to this realization, and that was the only respite she received as the Barabel let out a growling ululation and sprinted across the blood-slicked floor with murder gleaming in his eyes. Foyi whirled away again, using her trained agility and lighter step to avoid the charge. But she was used to fighting opponents without tails, and thus disregarded the Barabel's fifth appendage until it was too late. The heavy tail slammed against the back of Foyi's knees mid-twirl, and she went sprawling, but used the fall to tuck herself into a roll, gaining more distance from her attacker. She came up to one knee, but the Barabel was even faster than she had assumed, appearing before her and slashing down with his right hand. His claws caught Foyi in the chest, shredding her robe to ribbons but skidding off the Force-imbued armor of the Zeison Sha. Foyi let the Force guide her into a solid right hook, connecting with the Barabel's small nose, mashing it into a pulp with a squirt of blood.

If the Barabel felt any pain from his fractured facial feature, he did not show it, instead bringing his heavy head back and whipping it forward into Foyi's forehead. The Twi'lek felt as if she had been run over by a speeder, falling flat on her back and struggling to remain conscious. She felt meaty hands seize her ankles, and she was thrown bodily into another wall. Her armor cushioned most of the impact, but the breath she had not yet fully regained fled her again, while pain shot through every centimeter of her body. She attempted to get to her feet again, but another handful of claws caught her side and spun her around, throwing her to the floor. Foyi crumpled and curled in on herself as heavy slashes and blows were rained down upon her body, the wild, unpredictable strikes of a raging animal. She felt blow after blow sending shockwaves through her body, despite her armor, and they came too quickly and asymmetrically for her to predict or counter. Panic and pain raced through her mind as she realized she had no time to form a strategy, the realization that she could not take this beating, that she would die within moments.

It was that realization, that expectation, of her impending death, that gave her the insight to rally. For she instinctively fell within the limitless depths of the Force, and found herself reaching out into the rest of the universe, feeling her place within it. Everything around her seemed to slow to a crawl, and the pain of the Barabel's punches and slashes became a distant, barely-perceptible annoyance, one she detached herself completely from. There was no further urgency in her actions, no confusing emotions. She merely acted promptly and rightly, never expending more energy or effort than she needed. Her hands came away from their protective position about her face, her palms splayed underneath the Barabel's chest. She willed the Barabel to get off of her, and the creature did so, flying backward almost a meter from the blast of Force energy that spiraled out of her fingertips. The Force flowing through her like bright, clear waters, Foyi leapt to her feet, completely detached from the pain of her battered and bruised body, facing the Barabel with a serene expression and a fire in her eyes. The Barabel was not adversely affected by the Force push, though it did seem momentarily confused that she was able to stand, much less maintain a ready, aggressive stance. Foyi stretched out with her right hand, and beckoned the Barabel forward, inviting another devastating attack.

The Barabel obliged, leaping forward into a predictable charge. But it did not seem such an insurmountable opponent now, but rather a clumsy, lumbering one, not even in full control of its own faculties, with an offense born of insane, homicidal, primal rage. It was a simple thing to sidestep the charge. Immediately, the Barabel whirled on her, attempting to knock her over with its flailing tail, but Foyi had seen the attack long before it ever occurred, and she jumped straight up, tucking her feet into her body. While midair, the tail slowly whipping beneath her, her right foot lashed out, catching the Barabel in a devastating flying kick to the chin that staggered him backward and elicited a howl of pain. He was still stumbling, his neck craned upward, when Foyi landed, and her left hand lashed out, her fingers held together like a blade that slammed into the soft portion of the Barabel's throat. The Barabel made a gagging sound as he clutched at his throat, leaving him defenseless to Foyi's follow-up attack, a Force-imbued righthand punch that descended on the top of his brow, smashing the Barabel to the ground. Foyi hopped backward, expecting another attack, but her connection to the Force revealed the slow, labored breathing of the Barabel: she had knocked him unconscious.

Foyi could feel the pain from her injuries beginning to become prominent in her attention again, but she stayed beneath the calming waves of the Force as she looked upward. The sounds of blasterfire had died down, but she could still hear hurried footsteps, screams, and shouted orders. Rayf's head appeared over the lip of the gladiator pit, smears of blood on his face that did not belong to him, his expression showing concern, then relief at seeing her still alive. "Foyi! I took care of the first few guards, but there're more coming! We gotta get out of here!"

Foyi took a running leap, pushing off the smooth tiles with the Force and jumping high enough to reach the lip of the pit. A quick scramble and Rayf's strong hands helped her out of the pit, into a scene of abject chaos, as patrons and spectators all crowded toward the exit while tripping over the wounded and the dying. The Hutt on the dais above was bellowing something in thunderous Huttese, and she could already see more armed thugs appearing on the platform above, presumably from some door or opening up there out of her sight. "Where's Ak-vir?!" she shouted above the cacophony.

"He escaped! Something we should do too before we have nowhere left to go!"

Foyi nodded, shoving aside her anger, her fear, and her pain as she concentrated on running alongside Rayf, heading for the nearest exit and escaping the confines of The Cruelest Cut.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Tama slowly emerged from the sickening fugue state between consciousness and awareness by the sound of metal grating against metal, producing a startling squeal that echoed hauntingly through the claustrophobic cell in which she was trapped. She raised herself weakly from the fetal position she had slumped into in the corner, her stained and moist clothes sliding against her dehydrated skin with an uncomfortable rasp of fabric. Her body ached throughout its entirety; her stomach had twisted itself into an unyielding knot, while a pervasive emptiness permeated her being. But these concerns fled her when she saw with both surprise and alarm that the door to her cell had opened, and silhouetted by the flickering red light above the door stood a tall, gangly figure. Her malnourished mind briefly believed she was looking at the disembodied skeleton of an unknown humanoid with an oblong head, but the figure stepped into the cell, and she identified it as a B1 Battle Droid, a relic of the Clone Wars. The automaton stumbled into the room on unsteady feet, its pitted, scoured, and patched plating suggesting multiple refurbishments by unskilled hands. The droid stopped in front of Tama's prone form, and a high-pitched, static elicited from its broken vocabulator. The droid carried no weapon that she could see, and she momentarily considered running past the droid and trying to escape through the open doorway, but just trying to lift her head to look up at the droid exhausted her. She had gone too long without food, and she never got more than an hour or more of sleep, due to the insane mumbling of her tormentor's disembodied voice echoing through her head. So she offered little in the way of resistance when the droid bent over, clasped metal fingers about her wrist, and began dragging her across the floor. Tama gave a soft cry of denial, but she could do little in her weakened state, and so her limp body slid across the wet and mossy floor and out into the hallway beyond.

The droid drug her along a dark corridor, the only illumination coming from flickering red glowstrips over a multitude of doors that were spaced frequently on either side of the passage. They appeared to be in a large structure of some kind that displayed extensive erosive decay, colonies of mold creeping across the floor and walls, water and vines dripping from the ceiling. The architecture, like her battle droid captor, was a relic of the Clone Wars, and the lack of decorations, the size of the supports along the wall and ceiling, as well as the severity of the hall's geometry, suggested some sort of military function. _Is this an old Separatist base?_

The droid paused in front of a door that was large enough to allow passage of three or four humanoids walking abreast. Its metal index finger reached out to tap a few buttons on the moldering panel beside it, and with a grumbling complaint, the doors split diagonally and disappeared into the walls, opening a large portal into the dark room beyond. The droid nearly jerked her arm from its socket as it hauled her forward, and unceremoniously skidded her across the floor. She slid about a meter before the floor dropped from beneath her without warning. She had neither the time nor the presence of mind to utter a cry of surprise before her fall became a sudden stop as she struck a metal floor. Her weakened body shuddered with the impact as pain lanced along her extremities, and she gasped for the air that had vacated her lungs so agonizingly. She curled into a fetal position again, small tears squeezing from her eyes as she gasped for air, gasped in pain. She lay there, breathing heavily, willing the pain to fade, to leave, trying to call upon the comforting flurry of sensation that was the Force to ease her suffering, and finding no concentration. No solace.

In a few moments, as the pain began to subside and her breathing became easier, she was aware of other presences about her. At first, she squeezed her eyes shut in fear, believing the voice to be returning to her head. But then she heard heavy breathing, whimpers, and sniffles, with her ears and not her mind. Tama forced her eyes open, and carefully pushed herself upon her palms and knees, kneeling in something slimy and barely registering it. She was in a dark space with dim illumination from directly above her; a quick look upward showed a single light hanging at least five meters above, encircled by dark, permacrete walls. She was at the bottom of a cylindrical pit of sheer walls, adorned with random spatterings of fungi and dark trails where water had run down their sides. In the pit with her were several sentient beings, all children of a variety of species, roughly an equal number of girls as well as boys. She recognized Rodians, Bothans, Twi'leks, humans, Duros, even an Arconan and a Nautolan. Some of them huddled together, for warmth or comfort it was difficult to say, but most had found their own spots to sit or lie against the curvature of the pit's walls, often casting suspicious glances in the direction of those present. All looked as terrible as Tama felt, their bodies shriveled, their eyes sunken and swollen, their torn and soiled clothing covered in grime, mud, and bits of mold. She had not voluntarily opened herself to the Force, but the pain, fear, and despair erupted from the children around her, assaulting her ears with discordant, dirge-like notes, her tongue with a sour, acrid taste, her nose with a stench like decaying corpses. The mental and spiritual anguish of the other children was almost more nauseating than the pain and malnourishment experienced by her physical form, and she instinctively tried to make her Force presence insignificant, just to save herself the others' anguish.

Tama slowly began to crawl out of the center of the floor, the other children watching her with a variety of expressions, as she was the latest to be thrown in the pit with them. She pressed herself against the cool, slick permacrete, then craned her neck to look upward, at the circle of light that signified the uppermost opening of the pit. She caught movement just at the edge of the pit, and another Battle Droid came into view, hauling a sizable bundle that gave a squeal as it was hurled down into the pit. Purely on instinct, Tama attempted to position herself in order to catch the girl being dropped into the pit, but her weakened state merely ensured that she was just underneath the girl. Pain shot through her injured, anguished form as she inadvertently used her body to break the newcomer's fall, and they fell in a tangle before gaining enough strength to extricate themselves from each others' ensnared limbs.

Tama was still gasping in pain when the girl turned to face her, soft apologies on her lips, giving the Twi'lek a good look at the teen she had tried to save more personal injury at the cost of her own pain. The girl was a Zabrak, with dusky red skin almost maroon in color, violet eyes, and black hair cut shoulder length, the crown of vestigial horns adorning her head peaking through the thick locks. That hair hung in greasy, stringy strands across her face and eyes. Her cheeks were sullen and hollow, her lips chapped and bleeding, her body little more than skin and bone. Her sunken eyes were dark with pain and lack of sleep, but some spark of life still swam in them, especially when she focused on the Twi'lek. She reached out a grimy hand, touching Tama's shoulder awkwardly. "Are...you okay? I—I didn't mean to land on you..."

Tama gave a weak cough, then pulled herself back against the wall. She looked up again at the top of the pit, stretching out timidly with her Force-enhanced senses. But she felt no more movement above, and she could not hear the telltale _clank_ of the Battle Droid's metallic feet. She turned to face the Zabrak girl, who had sidled up beside her, drawing her knees up to her chest. Distantly, Tama noted that the girl appeared to be about her own age. "It's actually my fault," she answered hoarsely. It was painful even to talk, and she could not work up enough saliva in her mouth to wet her throat. "I tried to catch you, so you didn't have to hit the floor so hard, like I did." She gave a humorless chuckle. "Turns out being starved for a week or so does no wonders for your strength."

The Zabrak nodded, too tired and weak to even produce a similar expression of mirth. "I feel you. _Stang_ , it's wonderful to talk to someone real again. All I've talked to in the last week is this insane voice that keeps rambling through my head...I think I'm maybe going crazy."

Tama shook her head, her _lekku_ twitching limply. "You're not...crazy. I heard the voice, too. The voice of our kidnapper. It claimed...I was here for my 'sins', and this was to be my crucible."

The Zabrak girl gave a breathy sigh. "Damn. I was kinda hoping...I was crazy, an' this was all some nightmare. I kept hoping that none of this was real." She looked around at all the other children huddled in the bottom of the pit, some of them speaking quietly amongst themselves, others lying in stupors, and a few listening intently to Tama and the Zabrak's conversation. There was nothing else for them to do, after all. The Zabrak faced the Twi'lek. "I'm Nuri, by the way."

The Twi'lek nodded appreciatively. "I'm Tama. Pleased to meet you. Wish it was under better circumstances."

"You and me both, _pateessa_."

Tama licked her lips; her tongue and lips both felt like the dirt of Yanibar. "Where...where'd they get you? Where do you come from?"

Nuri gave a shake of her head, her greasy locks slapping wetly against her neck. "Nar Shaddaa. My father's the captain of a spice freighter, and we had to stop to drop off a shipment for the Anjiliacs. Turns out they were interested in more than just the spice he was delivering." She ground the palms of her hands into her eyes. "I—I don't know if my dad's still alive...I don't know if they killed him..."

Tama could not help but put an arm around the girl's thin shoulders. She opened herself slightly to the Force, letting that touch evoke calming emotions in Nuri, a pitiful gesture meant to ease Nuri's suffering. Nuri sniffled a bit, but she seemed too exhausted to even produce actual sobs. The Zabrak rubbed her eyes a moment, then turned a concerned glance on the Twi'lek girl. "Where did you come from? Where's home?"

"Yanibar. Some slavers kidnapped me there, and I woke up...here, wherever here is."

Nuri crinkled her nose in thought. "Yanibar? I...I've never heard of it..."

"I don't think a lot of people have. It's a real Hutthole way on the Outer Rim. Lots of storms, voorcats, and it's hard to grow crops or even eke out a decent living, but it's home, I guess."

Nuri looked around the pit, scrutinizing the other prisoners and the slick, moldering walls. "Do you have any idea what planet we're on?"

Tama shook her head, her own eyes roving absentmindedly around her fellow prisoners. "I've no idea. I have never left my home before, so I know very little about other planets in the galaxy. I was hoping that you might know, being a spacer and all."

Nuri snorted. "I may have been to a lot of different worlds in my short life, but there are thousands upon thousands of them in our galaxy, and no one, not even the Emperor himself, knows about all of them, or visited them all." She ran her dirty fingers along a tiny colony of mold creeping down the wall, rubbing the spores sticking to her fingertips. "If I had to guess, though...considering the amount of plantlife and fungi I've seen in these ruins, as well as the temperature and humidity levels, I believe we're on some sort of jungle planet or moon. Which doesn't really help us much, considering how many of those there are out there...I mean, we could be on Thyferra, or Gobindi, or even Mrlsst." Her face paled as another possibility occurred to her, and she swallowed in fear. "Or we could be on Dxun. If that's the case, we are so _farkled_."

Tama could not disagree with that sentiment. Pash had told her some common spacers' tales regarding the Demon Moon of Onderon, tales that were usually told only in hushed whispers, or to elicit terror in the listeners. The possibility that they were on Dxun was now a very real concern for her, as it would probably explain the pervasiveness of the Dark Side and the overall corruption in the Force she felt on this world. She shivered involuntarily, craning her neck to look up through the pit's opening again, then dropped her gaze to those surrounding the pair, to the other children starved and scared by their unseen captors. Her brow furrowed as something alerted her within her subconscious, as if the sensory portion of her brain was attempting to draw her attention to something that was out of place in this situation. Or perhaps it was the Force whispering to her, urging her to pay attention to a hidden message or pattern right before her eyes. She concentrated on those around her, and she began to recognize similarities amongst the children gathered, despite the perceptual differences based on their species, expressions, and origins. She scooted over a little, farther from Nuri and closer to a Bothan male, who was busy picking at his fingers, as if there was a great treasure hidden beneath his nails. He looked up at her as she approached, then quickly ducked his head again, focusing on his claws.

"Hey," Tama called softly for his attention. When he did not immediately acknowledge her, she pressed on anyway. "Hey, how old are you?"

The boy gave her an angered, sidelong glance. "What's it to you?"

"I'm just curious. I'm Tama, by the way. I'm fourteen standard years old."

The Bothan boy continued to study his fingers, though the fur around his angular cheeks ruffled a little, displaying some sort of emotion Tama could not hope to interpret, due to her unfamiliarity with Bothans. "I'm only twelve."

Tama shifted her regard to a human boy across the pit from her. He also looked suspiciously like he was of the same age as the Bothan she spoke to. She then turned back to Nuri, and began studying the other girls languishing in the pit, all of whom appeared to be at least two years older than the boys, like herself and the Zabrak. She began calling to other children, asking their names, but more importantly, their ages. Nuri picked up on the Twi'lek's suspicions almost immediately, and questioned those nearest her with similar lines of inquiry. It was not long before they had asked such questions of all children present, and Tama felt both a moment of accomplishment, as well as a thick fist of dread clenching her stomach. "No matter the species, all the girls here are fourteen, and all the boys are twelve," she whispered to Nuri. "That can't be a coincidence. It means something...something important to whoever has put us here."

"But what?" came Nuri's predictable reply.

Tama's _lekku_ twitched nervously, her _tchin_ curling protectively about her throat. "I don't know. Nothing good, most likely."

 _Clever Tama. Pretty Tama. Evil Tama._

Tama reflexively mashed her palms against her ears, but the liquid wickedness of the voice was suffusing her mind, and was not the least bit audible. She saw most of the other children doing the same, some of them offering up wails of fear and pain as the barely coherent murmurings rang through their brains. "It's saying my name, again," Nuri moaned, squeezing her eyes shut. "Make it stop," she continued pleading to no one in particular.

Tama gritted her teeth and carefully opened herself to the Force, letting its enhancement of her senses and feelings turn inward, as if she were diving into herself, trying to find the calm center of her being, like Foyi had taught her. She could feel the fear and the anguish elicited by the voice, the sensation of despair and hopelessness it seemed to evoke by its mere existence. Even in her weakened physical state, she was still of the Zeison Sha, of the horrendous world of Yanibar. She was not a completely helpless child pulled out of a comfortable, pampered life and thrown into adversity and horror. She had faced adversity every day of her life in all its varied forms on Yanibar, from brutally hot summers to deadly, uncaring tempests to the heavy hands and blaster barrels of Imperial Stormtroopers. She refused to be intimidated. She refused to be mastered by her fear, to let her emotions rule her and thus drag her into the Dark depths of this diseased world and the insane mind plaguing all of them. With what strength she could muster, she sat up straight and looked up to the lip of the pit. "Get out of our heads, you crazy _murglak_! We haven't done anything to you, and we don't have to answer to you for anything we've done!"

There was a lengthy, tense, mental pause, and the voice came back, stronger and clearer than ever, echoing within the minds of all those present at once, leaving many of the weaker children rolling on the floor in mental agony. _No no no no, not to me. To the Universe you must answer, for your sins are many and black and dirty and dark. But the Universe doesn't know, doesn't have it, so it must be the Shepherd. The Shepherd must save you all from the evil coiled within, the drochs of sin scratching, clawing under the skins to get out. The Shepherd cannot save you without feeling the darkness, cannot redeem your souls from your iniquities unless the evil has shown its ugly heads, its contorted, Shi'ido faces. No no no not again. We can't do it again, don't make us, don't hurt us. Blood on hands and blood in mouth, suck it all dry, eat all the darkness, swallow it whole and let it not evaporate in our bellies. This is your crucible, my_ patoggas. _No good thing comes without pain, no redemption without the cessation of iniquity. You are in bondage to the darkness that clings to your backs, the Defels that haunt your steps, your second shadow of inky black and bloody darkness. You must pass your tests and tribulations, so that we might capture and contain your sins for you. Evil must come into the light. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Come out for vengeance, for justice, for purity. It will be easier this time, my lovelies. Don't fret, close your eyes. We will be done soon, shhhh, shhhhh..._

The voice was gone almost as soon as it had come; Tama did not know that silence could ring uncomfortably in her mind, but she had no other experience to compare to the sickening, discombobulating sensation that now plagued her mental state. She blinked rapidly, realizing that her vision had unfocused entirely, and the smudged circle of light that denoted the pit's mouth swam back into view. Her eyes caught movement at the lip of the pit, and the skeletal silhouette of a B1 Battle Droid appeared, tossing several small bundles down into the pit, packages too small to be the limp bodies of more children. The morbid possibility that they might be the wrapped body parts of a sentient being rose unbidden in her mind, but the parcels struck the permacrete ground, rolling and splashing through the miniscule puddles and rivulets of water crossing the floor. Those gathered collectively stared at the objects lying before them, most questioning whether they actually existed, whether this was a cruel twist of the nightmare they had been forced to live for days on end. For the objects appeared to be food. Mildewed rolls, ration packs stamped with the Old Republic's insignia, and blumfruit riddled with spores. But it was food nonetheless, perhaps the single greatest desire of all the children behind escape.

An Elomin boy with short, shriveled horns and a combination of anger, fear, and insane hunger etched into his face suddenly lunged forward, his grubby fingers closing around a torn loaf of bread, then began reaching for one of the ration packs. This was the catalyst for the majority of the other children to rush forward, scrambling for the few scraps that had been dropped into the pit. There was not even remotely enough food to feed all the starving mouths, however, and nothing substantial that would last any length of time, and everyone knew it. Days without food, proper sleep, or comprehensive nourishment suddenly boiled over into a ravenous scuffle, each prisoner attempting to grab as much of the precious sustenance for themselves. Even Nuri lunged toward the tumult, and thus began a shrieking, screeching melee of fists, claws, teeth, and shouts, the prospect of filling their bellies giving sudden violent strength to their weakened frames.

But Tama saw this for what it was. There had been a reason for their captor to keep them all without nourishment for so long, only to provide just enough for a single prisoner to have a decent meal. They were playing along with this psychopath's sick, twisted game. She swallowed to clear her throat, then shouted as best she could, "Stop! Stop fighting!" While the command came out in a barely audible croak, Tama summoned all her mental strength and concentration to call upon the Force, putting its endless power behind those words. Most of the children did not even hear her vociferation as intelligent speech, but they felt a sudden mental weight, as if the world they were upon was pressing down upon their bodies, halting their violent and destructive actions. The children ceased fighting, many of them sporting new bruises, lacerations, and injuries to their bony limbs and sunken faces. The Elomin boy was hurriedly swallowing half the loaf of moldy bread, while the Nautolan boy was hugging two ration packs to his chest, an Arconan girl mashing blumfruit in her fists. Even Nuri had seized one of the ration packs that had been torn open, a pair of nutrient bars spilling on the floor. All of the prisoners were now staring directly at her; the only reason they were still not trying to kill each other or devour the prizes they had snatched being the power of the Force Tama was exerting over them.

Tama tried to breathe evenly. She could hear the sounds of music, the melody of the cosmos that only came from the Unifying Force, but it was becoming more discordant, distant and subverted by the dark energies she sensed in the very soil of the planet about her. She could feel the heartbeats of the others in her own veins, taste their sweat and blood on the back of her tongue. She was not actively trying to control them or freeze their movements, but she was concentrating on sending calm, soothing thoughts into the surfaces of their minds, her power of suggestion like a cool breeze on the fires of their anger, pain, and desperation. It was all she could do to continue to keep them calm. She gritted her teeth, realizing she had not the energy or time to try a mind trick or Force persuasive technique on an entire group of people; her words would have to suffice. "Listen... _please_. Don't any of you see what's happening? Whoever or whatever has...kidnapped us all has spent the last several days, yammering in our heads about our sins, revealing our 'inner darkness'. He keeps us alone, afraid, starving, and suddenly throws us in a pit together with just enough food to feed a single person for maybe a day?"

The Arconan girl with the blumfruit looked down at the pulped fruit. "You think...it's poisoned?" The Elomin boy gave a fearful gulp, having just swallowed the bread stuffed in his mouth.

Tama shook her head, tiny pinpricks of sweat beading on her forehead. She was surprised she even had enough moisture for sweat to form at this point. "If he had wanted to kill us, he would've already done it. Some of us have been at this son of a barve's mercy for a week or more, so he's had plenty of opportunity to kill every single one of us. No, this..." She made a wide gesture vaguely indicating the near fight to the death that had just occurred. "This is what he _wants_. He wants us to act like animals, to act 'evil', to 'bare our sins' by hurting or even killing each other for food. He needs...justification for the crimes he's committed against us and who knows how many others like us. We can't give it to him...we have to keep fighting _him_ , not each other."

"But, so...hungry," came the Nautolan's accented Basic, looking forlornly down at the ration packs he still hugged as if his life depended upon it.

"We all are," Nuri interjected, taking Tama's side. She held up the torn ration pack, carefully retrieving the nutrient bars and replacing them in the package, saliva thickening at the corners of her mouth. She turned to the Twi'lek girl with both concern and a shred of hope in her eyes. "What do we do, Tama? There's not enough food for all of us?"

"For each of us to have a meal? No. But for each of us to have a small amount of food, over the course of the next several days? Only if we share. Only if we work together. Only by sticking together, by fighting back and not letting this _sleemo_ win can we overcome and survive this."

The expressions that greeted her words ranged between skeptical to angered to hopeful to resigned. Tama was too weak, too drained in all aspects of her being to continue her widespread Force suggestion. She could not compel any of them to forcibly split up the food into equal chunks so that all might survive. She could not deny a certain amount of selfishness motivating her pleas for reason, as she was not one of the fortunate few holding onto the consumables dropped into the pit. But her words and her proposal for cooperation not only made sense, but felt right as well. To think of the group, to protect and assist those in need, to defend the weak, was at the core of what it meant to be Zeison Sha. She hoped Foyi would be proud of her, wherever her sister was. Assuming she was still alive.

One by one, each of those who controlled the food nodded, and began to partition their prizes out so that each of the prisoners had a miniscule portion, but each one would be given the chance to feed themselves. The Elomin boy was the most reluctant to surrender his bread, but he did so when prompted, and even picked away the parts that contained mildew. Each of the children ended up receiving a tiny portion of the ration bars, a few crumbs of bread, and a slice of the blumfruit. Each scooped up their portions ravenously into their aching mouths, though Tama and Nuri had the sense of mind to eat theirs slowly, allowing their stomachs, which had become used to the lack of food, to once again become accustomed to the food sliding down their esophagi. After some brief discussion, it was decided that the remainders of the food would be stuffed into the ration packs in a meager attempt to preserve their only source of sustenance, then placed in the center of the pit's floor, where all could see it. It was their only known source of nourishment for the foreseeable future, and thus could not be trusted with any single person: it was too important, and each of them were too famished.

They were just finishing up their pitiful meals when the voice was back in their heads without warning, striking them all down with its dark, heavy presence, as if they had been collectively struck in their heads with blaster bolts. _Foolish children! Foolish worms!_ it roared, dropping them all to their knees with migraines and mental agony, their minds threatening to break under the psychic onslaught. _You claim no darkness, no sin, and yet you strive to protect it, to hug it close to your stinking, rotting bodies! You do not understand, no no no, we don't get it, we don't want it...This is your path to righteousness, the road to the light so few in Existence have the chance to walk! You defy your Savior, you defy us, mustn't resist, isn't healthy. Oh stars, why? Why in the galaxy? Whywhywhywhywhy? We have given you the chance to excise the sin from each other with claws and teeth and horns. Bring the darkness out...your kind are filthy with it, born with it, live with it, suckle from its breasts day in and day out. This was the first test, first first first of many, and you have all failed. Prepare yourselves, give up your darkness, confess your sins...your tribulations have only just begun, and the crucible will be satisfied in blood. Hypocrites, hssiss, everyone of you. Blood in the water, death of the posterity, it must come again, it must happen, the Universe demands it. Live for now, wallow in your darkness, but you will not be saved if you continue in your hypocrisy._

The prisoners slowly rose to haunches and knees as the voice faded, rubbing their skulls. More than one of them began sobbing, the hopelessness bearing down upon their spirits again. Tama let out the breath she had been holding involuntarily, and let the back of her head slump against the wall. Nuri mashed her hands into her eyes, rocking back and forth, mumbling incomprehensible words of fear under her breath. The group had shown courage in the face of fear, but the voice had reasserted the fact that it held their lives in its unseen hands. Tama forced herself not to devolve into tears, subconsciously reaching out into the void, across the galaxy, trying to find the familiar, calming presence of her sister. _Foyi. Help. Please._

But all she felt was the Dark Side, and the stench of fear filled her nostrils until she could no longer find the strength to breathe.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Foyi was the first to exit the winding, labyrinthine tunnels of the Nest, having navigated to one of the many exits back into the sprawling Trade District by instinct alone. She clutched her discblade in her right hand, the only weapon she had been able to retrieve in the morass of fleeing and blasting sentients in the Cruelest Cut, as it was the only weapon specifically attuned to her, practically an extension of her own limbs. She had merely stretched out for it in the Force, and the blade had flown to her waiting palm as if of its own accord. She could still hear distant shouts behind her, as the violence that had erupted in the Cruelest Cut began to spread like a reactor leak throughout the other stores, alcoves, and cantinas housed in the convoluted tunnels and oblong caverns of the Nest. After all, the mercenaries, thugs, and assassins that frequented the district needed few reasons to hurt and kill each other. She took solace in the hope that the widespread violence would provide an opportune distraction to cover her and Rayf's flight. Unfortunately, it also assured Ak-vir's escape; finding him would be that much harder, now that he was aware they were after him.

She paused outside the stone maw from whence she had emerged, her mind racing, her eyes flicking back and forth, looking for hiding places. She was nearly knocked flat on her face when Rayf ran out of the exit behind her and slammed bodily into her back. She stumbled, then whirled on him. His expression seemed relatively calm, considering the debacle of the last few minutes; he was almost peaceful, as if he ran for his life every day of it. For some reason, this made Foyi angry, and she could not suppress a hissed, "What're you doing?"

"Running into you, obviously, because you're just standing around," he replied evenly, in a maddeningly unconcerned voice. His hands flew down the length of his wan-shen, and it was partitioned once again, so that he might better conceal it upon his belt and within his jacket. "We need to get off the streets before Yuelo's thugs come out here looking for us."

She was still annoyed with his overly calm facade—it had to be a facade—but she could not disagree with him. She stowed her discblade in the holster on her back, beneath her cloak, and walked beside Rayf as he kept up an easy, nonchalant gait that nevertheless carried him quickly down the street. What few pedestrians there were moving about the warehouses and permanent shops began to creep closer to the honeycombed tunnels that denoted the Nest, curious as to the amount of shouting, screaming, and blasterfire that could be heard from within its caverns, as it was abnormally violent and animated, even for a night in the district of Point Nadir best known for its violence and animation. Few paid more attention beyond passing glances at the Twi'lek and human pair, who continued to walk swiftly away from the sounds of blasterfire and ululations for blood.

Rayf gave Foyi a brief nudge on her shoulder, indicating that they should turn to the right. She did so, and the pair maneuvered around a disreputable store advertising a variety of illicit, military-grade weaponry and ammunition. They paused in the shadow of the building, their forms obscured by the low light and the multitude of overflowing trash receptacles arranged along the edifice's wall. Rayf leaned against the wall beside Foyi, and the two of them huddled close together, so that anyone who might spot them would most likely assume them to be close friends or a secretive couple in deep conversation. And while from a distance, it may have appeared that they were conversing, in actuality, they were both reaching out through the Force, attempting to sense the events still occurring in the Nest, as well as get a sense of whether their enemies were approaching.

Foyi reached out into the familiar ocean of the Force and partially submerged herself within its cool waters, the surface choppy and agitated by the ripples of violence emanating from the Nest and its inhabitants. The cold currents of the Dark Side were winding their way through the Force, splashing against her consciousness. She opened herself further to the Force, and wished to withdraw from it immediately, as the heat of anger, pain, and uncontrolled rage splashed against her, making the skin on her _lekku_ shiver. But she continued to reach, trying to concentrate on the bright presences of those who she could feel were searching for something, who would have hers and Rayf's faces on the forefront of their minds. Try as she might, Foyi could not distinguish these individuals in a veritable quagmire of emotions and violence that permeated the fabric of the Force itself. The Dark Side was growing stronger here, becoming less subtle and more pervasive, as if it were a creature lurking in the deeps, only now becoming aware of itself and the existence of others in the endless waves, coming forth to consume and devour. She concentrated on those dark impressions, on the heated emotions, the focused intent to kill, and could not help but feel a kinship with the Dark Side, a familiarity that was both new and recognizable. She found herself sinking deeper into the Force, reaching out for the colder, darker currents, drawing upon the tantalizing power and simplicity inherent in violence, in unrestrained emotion.

She snapped out of her reverie when Rayf's hand clenched her shoulder, and she was suddenly aware of his presence again. His signature in the Force was heavy with concern, concern aimed at her. "Foyi...are you alright?"

Foyi forcibly shoved the dark feelings coiling inside her down into the depths, attempting to put as much metaphysical distance between her and the Dark Side, even though she could not deny the feeling of loss she experienced when she did so. She blinked and glanced at Rayf, but refused to meet his striking eyes. "I'm fine...we should get moving. They're all still too busy killing each other in there, and we need to get a line on Ak-vir again before he has a chance to escape the port."

Rayf's hand on her shoulder did not tighten, but his touch seemed to gain more substance, holding her in place. "Foyi, you are not fine, so don't pretend to be so." When she turned an angry glare upon him, she found his steely regard in turn, refusing to back down in the face of her pain and simmering rage. "I don't blame you for all the fear, pain, and anger you're feeling right now. Ak-vir Vri and his ilk are scum, and tracking them down, bringing them to justice, is the right thing to do, especially if we can rescue your sister from it. But you are losing your grip on yourself, on your control. I sense the Dark Side in you...it drapes from your shoulders like a cloak, it drips from your words and actions. Now, I don't pretend to know Tama, but from everything you've told me about her, she sounds like a kind, gentle, and conscientious person." He leaned closer, and the intensity of his stare was discomforting, rooting her to the spot. "Now, ask yourself, and be honest with your answer. Would your sister want to see you like this? Would she even want to be rescued if she knew to what lengths you are willing to go to save her? Is her rescue truly worth it if she loses her sister in the process?"

Foyi refused to be intimidated, standing on the toes of her boots, their noses so close to each other they were nearly touching. "You're the one who wanted to help me find my sister. You can _never_ understand how important she is to me. I can't lose her, and if that means that I have to get a little rough with these _kriffing_ slavers, then that's what needs to be done. I've only been out in the galaxy for a few days, and I've realized that the galaxy isn't a fair or nice place. I would think that you would have picked up on that a long time ago."

"You used the Force to choke that man," came Rayf's firm response, his anger beginning to rise. "You used it to start crushing his heart and lungs! The Force is for defense, healing, discovery, and protection...never for attack! Never for personal desire! Never for _revenge_! That leads to the Dark Side! You are walking a thin line as it is, Foyi; if you continue down this path, you may find Tama, yes. But she won't even recognize you anymore! Is that what you want?"

Foyi met his stare defiantly, all manner of scathing retorts coming to mind. Part of her wished to reach out with her mind and give him a taste of the Force choke he so derided, to show him the true power of the Force, to teach him to think twice before questioning her. But the rational part of her mind, the serene portion immersed in the training and responsibility of the Zeson Sha swam to the forefront of her brain. She could not help but be appalled at the thoughts that had sprung unbidden; no, that she had allowed to fester within her. The Dark Side was not pure, unadulterated power to be used ambiguously and without expectation of consequences. It was the very epitome of imbalance, the representation of corruption and the loss of oneself uncontrollable emotions and irrational whims. Thoughts of Lido were inevitable, the images of his beaten and bloody corpse lying at her feet, the alien blood staining her murderous hands. She felt shame, fear, and guilt creeping into her consciousness, and for a moment, she could not breathe as she looked objectively at herself and the actions she had taken so far in the pursuit of her sister and her kidnappers. Rayf was more right than he knew; she had been balancing upon a cliff edge ever since Tama was taken away, and more than once had come far too close to freefalling into the black. She had been so willing, so ready, to give up and subvert a lifetime of training, a beautiful connection and relationship with the Living Force, merely because her life had taken a turn for the worse. And all of this had occurred within only a few days. She had allowed the Dark Side to sink its talons deep within her spirit, had been ready to sacrifice herself and her future at the altar of the end result justifying the means.

She shook her head, gasping as she slumped back against the wall. Rayf's brow furrowed with concern, and he put a comforting hand on her upper arm. "Foyi? What's wrong?"

She shook her head again, her _lekku_ shivering in agitation. "I...you're right, Rayf. You're right. I've been dancing with the Dark Side, and I didn't even know how far I had given myself up to it. I-"

Rayf's stare had been affixed to her own, but his head suddenly snapped up, his gaze sweeping to the side. Almost at the same time, Foyi felt a splash against her face, her danger sense rippling through the Force, and she followed Rayf's regard to see two figures in the alley with them, having seemingly appeared from nowhere. One was a short, heavily-muscled human, a T-21 Light Repeating Blaster clutched in his hands, the gaping barrel of which was aimed for their torsos. Beside him was a much taller and bonier figure, the gangly frame of an insectoid Blood Carver, a DH-17 Blaster Pistol gripped in his left fist. Both of them wore cloaks black as night, secured at their waists by equipment belts laden with weapons and ammunition, their dark hoods pulled so far over their faces, it was a chore to identify their species. But the threat they posed was not in question, as they raised their blasters menacingly, their mouths firm, grim lines.

Rayf pushed back from Foyi, his hands flying toward his waist. The Twi'lek pushed off the wall, reaching back for her discblade. And while the Force could enhance their reaction times far past what they were naturally capable of, their distracted state had caused the warning of danger to come too late. The Blood Carver's blaster erupted with blue rings of energy, two of them in rapid succession, carefully aimed to anticipate the directions the pair of Force-wielders would try to evade. Rayf went sprawling across the stone floor, bouncing a little in the somewhat less-than-standard gravity, while Foyi was slammed against the store's wall, slumping to the side to impact a trash receptacle with a noisy _clang_. She struggled against the debilitating effects of the stun blast, trying to maintain a firm grip on her conscious thought. But her thoughts turned into disjointed cascades of sensations as the stun blast overloaded her bodily functions; her grip loosened, and she plunged headlong into dark oblivion.

* * *

Foyi came back to reality to find Rayf shaking her weakly, as if the action pained him in doing so. She found herself lying on her side upon a slab of metal; further inspection through bleary eyes revealed the slab to be a sort of bed protruding from a wall in the small, cramped chamber in which she found herself and Rayf. He was perched on the edge of a similar "bed" parallel to her own, his body still quivering from the effects of the stun blast, as if he was in a frigid environment. For herself, it was several long moments before she could start thinking straight again. She was having great difficulty stringing coherent thoughts together, as well as thinking critically and rationally about the new and unwelcome situation they had found themselves in. She forced herself to a sitting position, which turned out to be a monumental struggle due to the painful aches arcing through her muscles. Her stomach threatened to disgorge her last meal, and the world swam before her eyes. Rayf helped her to remain steady while upright, his gentle grip on her forearm becoming an anchor of metaphysical contact. He was calling upon the Force, directing it through her body, and she felt the calming, soothing waters fill her like an empty, thirsty vessel. She blinked her eyes as her thoughts finally began to come back into focus, and the room materialized around her in greater detail. They were enclosed in a room barely three meters to a side, completely unfurnished. Dim glowstrips provided a grim, dusky illumination. The pair of slabs that protruded from the wall could retract out of sight by manipulation of a pair of buttons beside their mechanisms, and on the far wall was a single blast door. A holocam above the door watched them with its stationary, judgmental eye.

Foyi let out a sigh, trying to shake the cobwebs from her mind. "Rayf...where the hell are we?"

Rayf shrugged. His body was still quivering, but the voice that slipped from his mouth was calm, confident, and unhindered, as if the stunblast had had a lesser effect on him. "Dunno, cousin. I only woke up a few minutes ago. Wherever those hoods took us, they transported us when we were unconscious, most likely so we wouldn't have a clue where we were when we woke up. Thus, I've no idea." He grimaced, rubbing the back of his head as if it pained him. "Though I've a pretty decent guess as to who our new hosts are."

Foyi seized her _lekku_ with both hands, as they were uncontrollably twitching. "Is it Ak-vir and his crew? Yuelo's thugs?"

Rayf shook his head, running a hand across the stiff hairs on his chin. "You would think so, but no. I'm pretty sure this is someone new we've managed to piss off. I think...we've been kidnapped by the Sable Dawn."

"That sounds made up."

He snorted. "If only. Unfortunately, they're as real as you and I; I'd rather be in Yuelo's slimy paws than held by these people. _Sithspit_ , Foyi, you really know how to show a guy a good time."

Foyi did not have the patience for his cavalier attitude. "Who're the Sable Dawn, Rayf?"

"They're probably the most dangerous criminal element on this whole mynock-riddled asteroid. They're a bunch of assassins, terrorists, and bounty hunters buying and selling the cessation of people's lives. Murder is what they sell, and murder is what they're best at. They prefer to keep to the shadows, holding down regular jobs and lives, your everyday, neighborhood scum, until they get a contract on your life and put a blaster bolt in your spine."

Foyi considered his words for a moment, the dire situation they had found themselves in just beginning to dawn on her. "If they kill so many people...why are we still alive?"

"That's what's got my choobies clutched tight," Rayf responded sarcastically. "If we're still alive, it means they want something from us other than our lives." A forced smile came to his lips. "On the bright side...us still being alive means no one's put a hit on us yet that the Sable Dawn's interested in taking."

Foyi groaned. "I'll add that to the list of things that have gone right for us since we got here." She scrutinized the human, realizing that he was not really shaking anymore. In fact, he appeared to be back to normal, his eyes clear and alert, his movements precise and controlled. "You appear to be getting over that stunblast miraculously fast. Have you built up an immunity to them over your years of illicit activities?"

"Hilarious. No, actually, it's one of the many benefits of Matukai training. Normally, I can just shrug off a stunblast without a problem, but I have to be aware someone's shooting at me. Another reason I think those guys were Sable Dawn assassins. They're sneakier than a nexu in the jungle."

Foyi felt her body temperature fluctuating wildly, and she hugged her arms close to her chest in a vain attempt to conserve body heat. "We really don't have time for this! The more we're delayed by info brokers, drunken spacers, trigger-happy mercs, and hooded assassins, the more time there is for Tama to get hurt, or taken out of our reach! We need to find a way out of here! How do we do that?!"

Rayf stared at the blast door, as if it would open of its own accord if he stared at it long and hard enough. He sighed and flopped back on the slab, folding his hands behind his head. "I say...patience."

Foyi gave him an incredulous stare. "Patience."

He pointed at the holocam above the door, indicating that their captors were most likely watching their actions and listening to their entire conversation. "Yes. Our hosts will be along in a few moments, and then...they'll release us from the cell."

"To use us in whatever nefarious plan they have for us."

"Hey. You can't have pure sabacc every hand."

Foyi shook her head, glowering at the blast door and trying very hard not to be sick all over the floor. "I don't even understand you half the time."

"I'm just trying to put a positive spin on our situation is all, Foyi. We'll get no closer to your sister if we let ourselves wallow in misery and despair. After all, the Sable Dawn want us alive, so we don't have to worry."

Foyi gave him a skeptical glance. "I think the fact that we're in their cell is cause for worry."

Rayf gave her a long-suffering glance. "Could you please lighten up for one second?"

"Why don't you go suck void?"

Their argument and derogatory statements may have continued for an inordinate amount of time, but the both of them sat up straight, acutely aware of new presences outside the door to their cell. The pair turned to face the door just as it slid up and out of sight with hardly a whisper of sound, revealing a human and a Duros standing in the doorway expectantly, dressed in brown and gray tunics and pants, light combat armor, and emerald cloaks. They carried blasters that were not presently pointed at the Twi'lek and human prisoners, but were held in assured grips that signified they knew how to use them, and could bring them to bear at a moment's notice. Rayf slid off the edge of his bed, putting on a rakish grin. "Stars and galaxies, am I glad to see you guys! I've needed to pee for the last several hours, and I can't go with her watching me."

Foyi gave him an incredulous glance, trying to discern whether he was actually trying to make their armed captors angry. Neither the human nor the Duros seemed overly amused by his antics, gesturing with their blasters. "Follow us," the human male said in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Oh, you don't have to show me to the 'fresher. Just point me in the right direction, and I'm sure I'll find it."

The Duros leveled his weapon at Rayf's head, his wide mouth set in a grim line, his eyes murderous. "Shut up, and follow us. Now."

Rayf raised his hands slightly in a gesture of surrender. "Sure. When you put it that way, who can argue?"

Foyi followed Rayf out of the room, and the two of them came into a cramped hallway, brightly lit by white glowstrips overhead and glowing panels along the walls. The corridor was lined with nondescript doors similar to the one from which they had emerged, the passage barely large enough to allow two humanoids to walk abreast. The Duros mercenary led the way down its length, followed by Rayf and Foyi, with the human bringing up the rear; Foyi could almost feel the threat of his blaster, like a circular target being burned into the small of her back. She breathed deeply, centering herself and sinking into the Force. She recoiled when she felt the same venomous presences she had felt when first setting foot in Point Nadir, the beings steeped in the Dark Side, reaching out to her as well, studying her, watching her with the hungry, metaphysical eyes of invisible predators. She closed herself off from the Force, trying to mask her presence, willing herself to be small, insignificant. She sent a hair-thin tendril of thought to Rayf's back, an unspoken question, a soft call for awareness, an inaudible warning of danger. Barely had she sent this form of communication to him then she received a reply, a reassurance that he was aware of the apparent Darksiders all around them. She sent out a questing current to the human behind her, then one to the Duros, feeling their emotions, sensing their surface thoughts. The two of them were surrounded in darkness, a void of threat, violence, and avarice born of lengthy pasts of heinous actions and bloody murder. But neither one of them recognized her expanded presence or her probing mind, as they were not sensitive to the Force's flow. But the feeling of being watched from afar with cold interest and malicious intent did not abate. Wherever these Darksiders lurked, they were close by.

The Duros ahead of them paused in front of a door larger than the others they had passed, and it slid open, revealing a claustrophobic turbolift. Foyi and Rayf were both ushered inside first, then pressed against the back wall by the human while the Duros selected a floor. The door slid closed, and Foyi felt her stomach jump into her esophagus when it dropped into the levels below, the inertial compensators on the lift apparently faulty. The lift rumbled for a few moments, then ground to a halt, and the door slid open. Foyi and Rayf were shoved forward through the portal and into what appeared to be a reception area that was at odds with what they had seen of the rest of the facility of mercenaries and assassins. Whereas the cell block above had been constructed of severely geometric lines and right angles, the room around them had gently sloping walls that curved up into a domed ceiling. Three doors led out of the room, each of them set in doorways with rounded tops and minutely curved sides. Along one wall was a desk which seemed to combine the circular arrangement of Imperial communications terminals with the curvilinear structure of Selkath architecture. The desk was flanked by a pair of rare bota plants, and behind it sat a Rutian Twilek in a conservative suit that nonetheless hugged her feminine curvature in all the most appealing ways. She gave the group a smile that was more sinister than welcoming, then spoke to the Duros explicitly. "He's waiting for you. The door's open."

The Duros nodded, then led the prisoners to a door on the far wall, which opened at their approach, ushering them into a spacious, well-lit office, structured in curves and subtle lines like the lobby beyond. The majority of the office's floorspace was dominated by a table with a glossy black matte finish so polished, it could easily function as a mirror. The table contained a few examples of sculpture and pottery from various intergalactic cultures, as well as datapads and flimsiplasts laid out in neat, orderly piles and arrangements. There were a pair of windows in the room as well, through which was glimpsed the white peaks and beautiful plains of Alderaan, if Foyi's memory of holoimages was sharp. As far as she knew, they had not left Resh 9376, so she guessed the images through the circular windows were projections themselves.

Her eyes, however, were immediately drawn to the people awaiting them in the room. Toward the back, standing beside one of the windows displaying scenery from across the galaxy, was a thin human male dressed in a nondescript, earth-tone cloak over simple tunic and trousers, having the air of a traveler or seasoned spacer around him, while his stance evoked confidence and his dark eyes both pride and lethal intent. A blaster pistol was strapped to his hip, while a blaster rifle was gripped in his hands, its barrel aimed at the floor. Before him, seated at the table with his hands folded carefully before him was another human male of more advanced age. His pale skin gave off a strange hue in the well-lit room, as if it was powdered or had been smeared with makeup. His wispy hair was gray and parted in the middle, not a strand out of place, which was in accordance with the pressed, expensive suit he wore. Soft wrinkles splayed from the corners of his eyes and the edges of his mouth. He appeared to have no weapons, nor was his quiet, pleasant expression oppressive or overbearing, and yet Foyi felt his presence filling the entire room. It was like walking from a cold exterior and into a sauna, the heady, restrictive atmosphere making it difficult to breathe. She met his soft brown eyes and felt irrational fear twisting in her gut, reaching up with cold, grasping claws to seize her throat and further restricting her breath. The Dark Side radiated from both men in cold, undulating waves, threatening to drown her with its intensity, while enticing her with its black promises of unimaginable power and the will to dominate one's entire existence. Having brushed so close to the Dark Side on multiple occasions within the last few days, Foyi had to scramble to keep herself balanced, the seated man's influence already subverting her subconscious. She looked to Rayf to find his normal, serious expression painted across his face, though his eyes had become like solid points of ice as he stared at the man at the table. He could feel the Dark Side about these two as well.

The Duros and human guards roughly shoved Foyi and Rayf into a pair of seats at the table across from the man in the suit. The man stared at both of them for a lengthy moment, then turned to the guards standing behind them. "Thank you. You may leave now."

Both of them gave courteous, deferential nods. "Yes, Mister Xan." At the mention of the man's surname, Foyi watched Rayf's expression blanch in recognition. Either he knew this man, or knew him by reputation, and judging by the way the Dark Side seemed to suffuse this man's very essence, she doubted that that reputation was a good one. The Duros and human guard who had led the two of them to this office walked from the room, apparently supremely confident that the two men left in the room could take care of Foyi and Rayf if they decided to cause any trouble for them. The man at the table watched them go, then returned his attention to the Matukai and Zeison Sha. His brown eyes showed lurid interest now, and he scrutinized them carefully; Foyi felt the skin on her _lekku_ crawl as she felt his eyes searching through her very soul. "Greetings and welcome, my esteemed guests. My name is Virec Xan. Perhaps you've heard of me."

Foyi shook her head, but Rayf nodded. "You're the head gundark of the Sable Dawn chapter in Point Nadir. Everyone who's anyone in this port knows who you are, though I didn't think you did face to face audiences unless your guests would end up dead at the end."

Xan's thin lips curled into a smile that was not remotely friendly. "Well, this is a special case, due to your _unique_ circumstances and abilities."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Foyi replied defiantly.

Xan's regard turned to her, and it was like getting hit in the face by a solid punch from a Gamorrean. "Indeed. So a Twi'lek youngling like yourself happens to be able to put a tempest-addled Barabel into a coma with just her fists, and no supernatural enhancement or intervention at all." The way he said it revealed that he did not believe this as a possibility at all. He leaned forward slightly, putting his palms flat on the table. "I have not the time for games, girl, so don't play me for a fool. I and my associates have sensed your presences since you first came to Point Nadir, when you reached out through the Force on multiple occasions. Based on that momentary contact and the information on your reckless and destructive activities our organization has been collecting about the the two of you, you are searching for something on this comet. If you did not have the Force, you most assuredly would have been killed long ago with your antics, considering how many dangerous people and groups you have managed to anger in your short tenure here."

"I don't remember pissing off the Sable Dawn," came Rayf's reply.

Xan's right eyebrow rose. "And as of yet, you have not. One of our agents was injured in that fiasco at the Cruelest Cut, but he'll live, and considering neither one of you actually pulled the trigger on the weapon that harmed him is one of a few reasons why you continue to live...at my preference."

"And we're supposed to be grateful for that?" Foyi replied.

"Gratitude is a useful emotion to cultivate, even when you believe it is not warranted," Xan chided her. "You may find that your relationships improve if you give consideration to others, my impetuous young Twi'lek."

Rayf nudged her, accompanying the movement with a quick mental flash, a brief sensation that she should be careful of what she said around this man. Rayf then turned to Xan, briefly eying the second man standing silently beside the window. "Well, for now you don't seem to want us dead, considering we're still alive. So maybe you would like to tell us what you want from us. I mean, we'd love to stop and chat for awhile, but we're kind of on a schedule, see, and if you could keep this short and to the point, both of us would be exceedingly grateful." He threw an arm around Foyi's shoulders to show agreement between the two, but she subsequently shoved the appendage away.

Xan allowed a small, sardonic smile on his lips. "Very well, Mister Moors. I have a proposal for the both of you, based on the commonalities all of us in this room share."

"Those being...?" Foyi queried.

One of the datapads sitting before Xan slowly rose from the glossy sheen of the table's surface, then began to spin languidly in circles. Foyi could feel the Force rippling about Xan's person, the cold current of energy he had stretched out to the datapad, trapping it in a deadly Force grip. "The Force, obviously. The ultimate weapon to vanquish all of one's foes, no matter where they exist in the galaxy. The only tool which allows us mere mortals to gain complete dominance over our entire existence, and with the proper will, the existence of others. You feel it, the same as I do, the same as my lieutenant does, the same as the most lethal and trusted members of the Sable Dawn do. And _that_ is why you are here; I wish to offer the both of you positions and training with the Sable Dawn. We always have need of people with your capabilities and Force sensitivity, and not only can we provide you a steady income and job security, but protection and anonymity from even the Emperor's Inquisitors. This is one of the most dangerous times to be a Force-user in the galaxy, but with the Sable Dawn as your employers and allies, you will experience security and invisibility you would not otherwise be capable of."

"You want us to kill for you?" Foyi asked, incredulously.

Xan gave her an exasperated glare. "Don't be so naïve, girl. You wouldn't be killing for me, you would be killing for our clients. We're not random murderers or in the practice of wanton carnage. We're business beings first and foremost. As a Sable Dawn assassin, you would kill for fees of unimaginable amounts you could only receive because of our reputation for efficiency, ability, and discretion. More importantly, we could hone your latent, poorly-trained connection to the Force into a weapon so powerful and so deadly, you could surmount any challenge or obstacle that stood in your way."

"Who says we're poorly trained?" Rayf responded, feigning hurt.

"The riot at the Cruelest Cut."

Rayf gave Foyi a sidelong glance. "Guess we can't argue with that."

Foyi ignored him, forcing herself to look straight into Xan's eyes, refusing to be intimidated by his fearful aura or the fact that he was carrying on this conversation while still rotating the datapad in midair, as if it required no concentration at all. Being a Zeison Sha Warrior, this was a technique of telekinesis she could replicate with little effort, and thus she was not impressed. "Well, I appreciate your offer, Mister Xan, but I think I speak for both of us when I say that we'll have to decline."

"Hold up!" Rayf interjected. "I'm still considering...nope, she's right. Not really my style. I have more of a thing for long sticks and knives than blasters, and I've never looked good in all black."

Xan's expression darkened, though whether he was annoyed by Rayf's behavior or the fact that he had been denied was difficult to determine. The datapad floated as light as a feather back down to the table, replacing itself on the stack of similar devices upon which it had been previously set. Xan folded his hands again and let out a sigh, which sounded more like a perturbed hiss. "I can't say I'm surprised by your answer; I even expected it. Though I assure you I was merely trying to spare your lives from the end results of this self-destructive swath of chaos you insist on carving through the shadowport..."

"How do you mean?" Foyi asked for the both of them.

"Since you've been here, you've managed to upset a great many people, most of whom hold long grudges, and some have connections to the powers that be in Point Nadir. Take it from me, the political environment in this shadowport is far more delicate than you could possibly understand, and upsetting the status quo around here is not taken lightly or with amusement, no matter how humorous you believe you are." Here his gaze needled Rayf, who had the presence of mind to look sheepish. "For your information, Captain Ak-vir Vri is in Zietta's employ, and a member of the Anjiliac Kajidic's army of knaves, mercenaries, slavers, and ne'er-do-wells. By assaulting him, you are on the verge of declaring war on the entire Clan, something I doubt either one of you are prepared for. Not to mention all the individuals you managed to anger and injure in your clumsy efforts to locate this disreputable Weequay. Sooner, rather than later, someone is going to approach the Sable Dawn with a contract for his uncivil tongue and your _lekku_. And when that happens, being the good business beings that we are, you will see us again, only there will be no niceties...only blaster bolts, and Force grips, if necessary. Do you understand now why I offered you a position with us? I'm only trying to make certain you make the smart choice, not to mention all your talent that would be lost if such an unfortunate circumstance were to come about."

Foyi made the bold move to stand, but neither Xan nor his lieutenant made any moves to stop her, so she placed her palms on the table and held Xan's gaze. "Well, thanks for the warning, but I think we'll make it just fine on our own."

Xan sighed again, and this time he was truly exasperated, but resigned. Rayf also stood, noting nothing in the Sable Dawn members' actions or Force presences that indicated they meant to initiate violence against the human and Twi'lek. "It's been a nice chat, but..." he glanced at an imaginary chronometer on his wrist, "...we're already late for an appointment, so we really should be jumping out of here."

"Are we free to go?" Foyi asked of Virec Xan, tensing her body in preparation for an attack, wishing she had her discblade in hand.

Xan nodded. "Of course...assuming you answer a question for me?"

"Shoot," Rayf replied hastily, eager to be gone from the Sable Dawn hideout. "I mean, go ahead. Please don't shoot us."

Xan folded his hands before his face, interlacing his fingers before turning his gaze on the Twi'lek. "Why are you after Ak-vir Vri? What has he done to you?"

Rayf answered for her, trying to remain vague. "He took something from us, and we just want it back. Forcibly, if necessary. Which is the way it looks like its gonna be."

Xan gave a wan smile, but his attention did not waver from Foyi's own. "Indeed. Considering Captain Vri is a slaver, I'm going to guess that the 'something' he took from you is a _someone_."

"The sithspawn kidnapped my sister," Foyi replied angrily, hoping that her willingness to be honest would reveal the reason for this line of questioning. "He's brought her into slavery _somewhere_ , and the last place he moved slaves through was here, Point Nadir. We need to finish our conversation with him so that I can find my sister."

Xan frowned slightly, a contemplative look on his face. "In that case, might I offer you some information that you may find valuable?"

Foyi remembered Pash cautioning her on Nar Shaddaa to not accept gifts from anyone, and she figured the same applied on this asteroid, or most any other place in the galaxy's seedy underbelly. Rayf was suitably suspicious as well, narrowing his eyes as he crossed his arms over his chest. "In exchange for what?"

Xan spread his palms. "Nothing at all. Call it a sign of good faith, and a small encouragement to reconsider the Sable Dawn's generous offer. Ak-vir Vri is well-known to us, and most other individuals who matter in Point Nadir. While officially he works for the Anjiliacs, he also lines his pockets with credits earned from side jobs for a variety of people in many capacities, from slavery to contraband to piracy. He's rather prolific for such a poor representation of his species...not that the Weequay have much to live up to, mind you. One of those people he takes extra work from is Yuelo, who I believe you met in part, considering you thoroughly slagged his cantina. Another one he works closely with, particularly in recent weeks, is Sho Sura, a purveyor of all manner of illicit goods and substances. He owns a warehouse in the Trade District, the designation of which I am willing to provide you, if you are interested. Perhaps Sura would know of Ak-vir's whereabouts."

Foyi was incredibly suspicious, but she did not want to look a gift nerf in the mouth. Rayf, however, spoke her suspicions audibly. "Yeah, I think we'd appreciate the help. Though I fail to understand what you get out of this. After all, you said you were a businessman; you must want something for this information."

Xan's smile was like that of a leering nexu. "Believe me, offering this information is not completely philanthropic on my part. Ak-vir Vri has had more than one aggravating encounter with the Sable Dawn, and myself personally. So far, he has not earned enough of my ire that I would kill him without being paid, but I would be remiss to pass over an opportunity to make his life more difficult. I may find your efforts those of amateurs, but perhaps they will have some mutual benefit to all those involved. Save for the Weequay in question." He grabbed one of the datapads off a stack, then input a series of commands, and unceremoniously slid the device across the table to Foyi. "The address for Sho Sura's warehouse is on that pad. We've noticed an unusual amount of comings and goings amongst both Sura and Vri's associates at that location in the last few days. Chances are, if Captain Vri can't be found there, then there will be someone who knows of his whereabouts."

Foyi picked up the datapad, cradling it to her chest as if it were the most precious object in the entire galaxy. She could not help but admit a large measure of suspicion regarding the validity of the information and the motivations of this Force-sensitive assassin, but she could feel the warmth of hope blossoming in her core and spreading through her body and spirit. Ak-vir Vri, and the location of Tama, had been within her grasp. Perhaps, because of this man, she would now be able to do what was necessary to rescue her sister and regain some measure of her former life. To return to a comfortable normalcy. "Thank you," she whispered.

"So you are able to convey gratitude. Good." Xan leaned forward, and his gaze grew dark once more. "But I would not be too ready to show appreciation for this if I were you. This is given under the assumption that you will _strongly_ reconsider my offer, and realize that you are moving about Point Nadir of your own accord at my will, and upon borrowed time. It is but a matter of time that someone comes forward with a lot of credits on your heads, and when that time comes, your heads will assuredly find their way to this table...whether your bodies are attached or not depends on your actions from here on out. Here's some more free advice: Do whatever it is you have to do in this asteroid, then leave if you value your lives. Not that removing yourselves from this port will save your lives if we take a contract on you, but at least you may get a chance to see your sister alive before you perish at the end of our blasters."

Rayf made a placating gesture with his hands. "Okay, we get it, you're scary. We'll just be on our way then, assuming you show us the way out?"

Xan indicated the silent man standing stock still behind him. "My lieutenant will guide you on your way. You will have to be blindfolded, of course. No one who remains outside of our organization is permitted to know the location or layout of our operations here."

"And our weapons?" Foyi asked expectantly.

"Will be returned to you once you are far from this place." The silent man behind him finally moved from his post; Foyi was certain this was the only point the man actually blinked the entire time they had been in the office. Rayf and Foyi carefully walked about the table, Foyi trying to keep her gait steady, her spine erect, as the stunblast still affected her to some degree. Xan turned to watch them go, his eyes cold, his facsimile of a smile even colder. When he spoke, though, his voice was melodiously warm. "Be safe. Be alert. Your lives depend on it."

With that veiled threat echoing in their minds, they followed the Sable Dawn lieutenant back through the lobby, past the Twi'lek receptionist, who offered them a smile worthy of a dragonsnake contemplating its next meal. They were joined by the pair of guards who had led them from their cell in the turbolift, and in its confines, their eyes were shrouded with blindfolds. The world went dark, and while Foyi immediately felt a sense of vertigo born of the stun weapon's aftereffects and her sudden blindness, she was not rendered senseless. Even in the stifling presence of the Darksiders and the assassins' natural cruelty and proclivity for violence, the Force was with her, extending herself past her own physical form. She could almost visualize the room they entered upon proceeding through the turbolift's doors when it opened up for them. She knew they were passing through another door into the larger, cavernous spaces of Point Nadir seconds before she was hustled through the doorway, and the contours of the waiting, rusted landspeeder they were bundled into were already familiar to her touch before she ever sat in its seats. The ride to their final location was not long, during which unseen hands replaced her discblade in its holster, and she heard the clatter of metallic cylinders being handed to Rayf as the mercenaries replaced the pieces of his wan-shen in his possession. Finally, the landspeeder hovered to a stop, and the two of them were unceremoniously shoved from its compartment. Foyi stumbled and braced herself against a wall she could not see, but she could feel the grime beneath her palms, and smell the stench of refuse and decay. There was a familiar quality to the smell, and she had the feeling that wherever she had been deposited was somewhere she had previously visited.

She heard the landspeeder rumbling into the distance, heard the sounds of infrequent passerby, their surface thoughts occupied by avarice and unchecked want. She steadied herself against the stone wall, then removed the bandana covering her eyes, momentarily struggling with the binding as it tangled about her _tchin_. She blinked her eyes in the dim light to regain their focus, and she found her suspicions to be correct. She was standing beside Rayf in the same alley, beside the same garbage receptacles, where they were taken by the Sable Dawn thugs. Which meant they were back in the Trade District, and thus not far from the warehouse that had been identified for them.

Rayf finished checking on the integrity of his weapon, then replaced the pieces at his belt with a flurry of gestures. He stepped closer to her, seeing that she was still swaying a little on her feet. "You doing better?"

Foyi inhaled a large quantity of the poorly-filtered air of Point Nadir, and regretted it once her nostrils were clogged with a variety of rank and stomach-churning smells. "I am now." She pulled out the datapad that Virec Xan had given her, calling up the map that specified Sho Sura's warehouse, currently their only connection to Ak-vir, and thus the fate of Tama. "I want to believe that Xan was truly being helpful back there, despite his threats and poor disposition, but this could be a trap as well."

Rayf nodded, looking over her shoulder to stare down at the screen, then returning his gaze to their immediate surroundings, trying to get his bearings in accordance with the map. "That occurred to me as well, and at any other time, I'd be getting a bad feeling about anything the Sable Dawn were remotely involved in. But this...I've got a good feeling about this."

Foyi nodded. "I can't disagree. I think Xan's actually helping us out here. So, let's go talk to this Sho Sura and ask him some simple questions about the company he keeps, before Xan comes through on his threats, and we have the Sable Dawn breathing down our necks like a bunch of akk dogs."

"Are you sure? You're still looking pretty warp-lagged."

She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. "I'll be fine. The Force shall sustain me. Do you know where we are on this map, because we really should get going. Tama doesn't have much time."

Rayf took the datapad from her, scratching the goatee on his chin in thought. He pressed a finger to the screen, indicating a small block of real estate registered to an arms dealer and fence. "We're at this shop here, and Sho Sura's warehouse is...over here, on the other side of the Trade District. Fortunately, away from the Nest."

Foyi sighed in relief, stretched her limbs to test how well they would support her and answer her commands, then checked on her discblade. The weapon was still in one piece, and in pristine condition, as was expected of a Force-imbued blade. "Then let's pay our new friend a visit."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Between the map provided by Virec Xan and Rayf's previous experiences with Point Nadir, it was simple for Foyi and Rayf to locate the warehouse belonging to this Sho Sura character. Reaching the coordinates required crossing the majority of the Trade District's expanse, which required an arduous and stealthy journey, keeping to the walls of shops, warehouses, and hangars, moving through the shadows, and sticking to alleyways instead of the oft-frequented streets. On more than one occasion they had to avoid roving bands of mercenaries who were attentive and alert, as if searching for particular individuals amongst the sparse crowds, droids, laborers, and speeders. Both Foyi and Rayf recognized more than a few of these mercenaries as members of the guards and entourage surrounding Yuelo the Hutt, and so they assumed these armed patrols were out looking for the pair. Foyi kept her overlarge hood drawn over her head, tucking her _lekku_ into its folds to make it even more difficult to identify her, while Rayf, for his part, walked openly, acting as if he belonged exactly wherever he walked. Foyi could feel the Force eddying about him, and knew he was drawing upon it to make himself seem insignificant and ordinary, so that most passerby's gazes would merely slide off his form, unless he did something violent or abnormal enough to grant him notice.

Over an hour of walking and slinking through shadows and alleys brought them finally to their destination. The warehouse owned by the individual known as Sho Sura was noteworthy among other such edifices in the fact that it was squat and solidly built, as if it were meant to withstand an orbital bombardment. There were two doors allowing the passage of humanoids and other sentients built in the front wall, flanking a massive blast door large enough to allow entry to a pair of speeder trucks abreast, or possibly a small starship. Just below the flat roof was an overhang that encompassed the entirety of the building, and embedded in the underside of the overhang at regular intervals were autoturrets, their deadly repeating blaster cannons swiveling back and forth, seeking targets with their sensory sweeps. There were at least two autoturrets per wall, so that no matter how one approached the building, they would be quickly caught in a crossfire of blistering blaster bolts. Also attached to this overhang were frequent holocams. No other guards or sensor systems were present that the two of them could see from their position, ensconced within the shadows of an alley across the street.

Rayf gave a low whistle. "No wonder Xan gave us the location to this place free of charge. He probably thought we weren't going to get in."

" _Sithspawn_ ," Foyi cursed, sinking deeper into the shadows, then whipping her hood back so that she might view their situation better. "You mentioned you were something of a slicer. Think you can do something about those turrets?"

Rayf shrugged. "Sure, if I could access whatever security console those thing are slaved to. But they don't make autoturrets so that you can access them through the HoloNet from a distance...they're on a closed system, with the commands given by a terminal on the inside of the warehouse. Of course, if we could manage to get into the warehouse in the first place, we wouldn't really have to worry about the autoturrets anymore...unless there're more inside..."

Foyi massaged her temples. "Then we're going to have to find our way around them. I don't really want to start another blasterfight like the one back at the Cruelest Cut. If we can, we should try and get in and out as quickly and quietly as we can."

Rayf scratched stubble on his jaw. "What do you think Sura's so schizoid about? I mean, the place is a murglin' fortress; what's so valuable he wants no one inside?"

Foyi's eyes lit with realization. "Do you think...slaves? Could Tama be in there?"

Rayf gestured expectantly at the warehouse across the street. "She's _your_ sister. Do you feel her presence?"

Foyi sunk deep into concentration, submerging herself in the incomprehensibly vast ocean that was the Force. Soon, the presences of others began to bob in the waves about her, giving her a feel for who and what they were, as well as their spatial distance from her. Rayf's presence was particularly strong and bright, creating great ripples and waves in the Force, but he had closed himself off to her, so that she could not get more than a general sense of his thoughts and wellbeing. She turned her focus ahead of her, sending currents out to the warehouse, as well as the unfamiliar beings within. There were not many humanoids in the warehouse, perhaps a half dozen, maybe even more, all of which creating dark, cold ripples due to their poor mindsets and pasts rife with violence and malice. She felt none of the desperation, fear, despair, or loathing she might expect from imprisoned slaves. She reached out further, her extended consciousness searching throughout the warehouse's entirety, but she found no presences she could positively identify as slaves or prisoners.

But then a familiar essence rippled across her senses, a presence she had gotten to know well when attempting to severely injure or end the life of its owner. A presence surrounded by a mass of others of like mind and demeanor, the group causing dark, choppy waves to shiver through the waters of the Force. She opened her eyes, and down the street, walking purposefully toward the warehouse upon which they were focused, was a motley crew of sentients. Weequay, Houks, a Nikto, a Zygerrian, and an Aqualish formed ranks more or less orderly as they followed a particular Weequay with a bandana bound about his dreadlocks and the fur of a wampa trailing behind him like a cape. Her gaze darkened with anger as she identified Ak-vir Vri and several members of his crew of slavers, cutthroats, and pirates. Rayf followed her gaze, and his regard similarly clouded, but not in anger; rather in determination, as if he were getting ready to race across the street in a bold move and put the targeted Weequay in a chokehold. "Well, well, well, speak of the rancor..."

Foyi watched as the slavers came within sensor range of the warehouse's autoturrets. The weapon emplacements swiveled to gain targeting solutions upon the newcomers, but a programmed friend-foe identification subroutine kicked in, and the autoturrets returned to their idle sweeps. Foyi glared at the autoturrets, the genesis of an idea forming in her mind. "Rayf, how twitchy do you suppose those autoturrets are? I mean, how likely would they be able to mistake a 'friend' for a 'foe', and vice versa?"

Rayf gave her a quizzical look. "I suppose...pretty likely. You'd just have to do something out of the ordinary, like making sudden, threatening moves, and they'd probably open fire. Why? What're you thinking?"

Foyi reached over her shoulder and withdrew the discblade from its harness. "I'm going to try something." Without further explanation, she cocked her arm and threw, whipping the discblade across the intervening space, the jagged edges whirling about the handle while the object curved in midair, rising higher in a trajectory that would carry it within the autoturrets' line of fire. The blaster cannons turned sharply as they began to track the object curving in at them, but Foyi's telekinesis carried the blade into range faster than they could acquire a targeting solution on it. The discblade ricocheted off the housing at the base of one of the autoturrets, then spun up and over the overhang, disappearing atop the roof. While the Force-imbued metal could have cut through the turret's durasteel if enough of a spin and telekinetic force was applied to it, this had not been Foyi's intention. The turrets, their limited processing capabilities believing they had been attacked, swiveled about until they found the closest individuals who could have attacked them, then subsequently opened fire.

One second, the sounds of raucous laughter and jeers could be heard from Vri's crew, only to be replaced with screams the next as both autoturrets lanced blaster bolts through their company. The Aqualish went down in a heap immediately, four smoldering holes burned through his torso and legs. The others ducked, drawing blasters as lasers screamed down at them. Ak-vir shouted something, and the group scattered, making more difficult targets as they ran for the nearest cover in the form of parked speeders, as well as containers and piles of refuse. One of the Houks collapsed as he lumbered toward a landspeeder his captain was using as cover, two blaster bolts stitching through his right leg. He bellowed in pain, before another bolt ended his cries with a shot to the base of the skull. Two of the Weequay were dragging themselves away from the firezone, smearing blood across the street. The cacophony of the turrets pouring seemingly endless bolts of laserfire at slavers and their positions of cover was deafening; acrid smoke accompanied the nauseating stench of burned, rank flesh and boiling blood.

Ak-vir snapped a comlink from his belt and began shouting into it, his words barely heard over the din by those watching from across the street. "Sura, you _karkin' sleemo_! Shut your damned turrets off, now! NOW!"

The turrets continued to whir back and forth, spitting blasterfire, ending the life of another wounded Weequay before suddenly ceasing their death-dealing. They froze in place for a moment, then the barrels of the cannons sagged, the red lights upon their bases going dim. One of the smaller doors on the warehouse's face slid open, and a male Gossam exited the building, his diminutive blue form clothed in pristine brown robes with gilt embroidery. His yellow, reptilian eyes were wide with a combination of fear, horror, and indignation as he rushed toward Ak-vir, who was just beginning to tentatively stand upright, not confident that the autoturrets would not longer fire upon him. Behind the Gossam man came four or five humanoids covered head to toe in impressive and fearsome armor, in various shades of yellow, ochre, and brown, with thick plating and oblong helmets meant to house heads larger and thicker than most near-humans. Their powerful arms carried blaster rifles and longblasters, while vibroknives and blaster pistols were sheathed at their hips, bouncing along as they ran behind on legs unnaturally short for their forms. The Gossam and his entourage jogged over to Ak-vir's position, and immediately engaged in a heated argument, Ak-vir clutching a fistful of the shorter humanoid's extravagant robes and hoisting him in the air, while the Gossam's mercenaries raised weapons.

It was not difficult to hear what was being said, as most of the words were uttered at the top of the respective opponents' lungs. "Sura, this had better not being some lame way of backstabbing me and me crew, you monkey-lizard piece of bantha _poodoo_!"

"There must be some mistake!" the Gossam squawked, wriggling in the Weequay's grip. "My turrets don't fire on business partners...one of your men must have attacked them!"

"None o' 'em were doing no such thing!" Ak-vir shouted back, his mouth open so far and so close to the Gossam's face, it looked as if he were ready to take a sizable bite of it. "I tol' you I ain't been liking walking under 'em guns every time I cruise by, an' I tol' you time an' again! An' now I know why they making me so nervous every time...'cause my _partner_ was planning on usin' em to stab me in the back down the road!"

The Gossam was shaking his head desperately, while making a motion at the guards behind him, a nonverbal command to have them stay back and not escalate things further. The guards, all of them practically itching for a fight, refused to back down, still aiming blasters at the enraged Ak-vir and his men. "Isn't true! Isn't true at all!" He swallowed visibly. "Was mistake, simple mistake...you know how touchy these turrets can be! I will make it up to you, promise, promise!"

Beady, dark Weequay eyes stared long and hard into large, yellow Gossam eyes for a long, tense moment. Finally, Ak-vir lowered his Gossam partner to the ground, then made a show of smoothing the creases his clenched fists had created in the man's tailored robes. "Alright, Sura...I'm inclined to be believing you. At least, believing you ain't _that_ much of a ranat to even think 'bout killing me." He stabbed a vicious finger up at the deactivated autoturrets. "But I want them things to stay _off_ the entire time me an' me crew are being here, an' no 'scuses, otherwise I'll be less inclined to be believing you no more, an' I'll put a blaster in yer mouth an' pull the trigger until I'm satisfied. Got me?"

Sura nodded, obviously relieved that there seemed to be a way to appease the wrath of his partner. "Got you good. Please, come inside. I have medkits and bacta patches for all your wounded men...they'll be well-treated..." He made a cutting motion with his hand again, and the guards accompanying him reluctantly lowered their weapons, even managing to look forlorn despite their helmets, which revealed nothing of their facial expressions. Those of the group as a whole still standing and able to walk properly followed Sura's entourage through the door, many of them still looking wary and carrying blasters openly. The bodies of those who had been killed by the autoturrets were drug in behind them, and the door slid shut once more.

" _Fierfek_ ," Rayf cursed. "I think those were Gank Killers. Sura's packing some serious heat." He turned to Foyi. "Nice job, by the way. That was astoundingly clever. How'd you know Ak-vir would demand the autoturrets to stay deactivated while he was on the premises?"

Foyi shrugged. "Honestly, I didn't know what would happen. I saw an opportunity to turn Vri and Sura against each other, and I took it." She glanced back at her companion. "What are Gank Killers?"

"Particularly grumpy and violent aliens I would suggest not getting in the direct path of," Rayf replied, standing straight and flattening himself against the closest wall. "You've given us an opportunity. Let's take advantage of it."

Foyi required no further invitation. She led the way across the street in a quick, low sprint, navigating a wide, circuitous berth about the warehouse, approaching it from the shadows and sneaking into the darkened alley beside Sura's edifice. She gathered the Force around her, felt it surging through her muscles, and she picked up sudden speed as she approached the structure's wall, climbing up the sheer surface as if it contained sizable handholds. She crested the roof just as Rayf launched himself into a Force-enhanced leap, landing on his feet beside her. The pair of them dropped into low crouches, trying to lower their profiles so as not to be seen from the ground below. The roof was level save for the occasional metal protrusion provided by a generator or a ventilation system and air scrubber. Foyi stretched out her right hand, and her discblade slapped into her palm, leaping from where it had been resting upon the roof, near the front edge. She replaced the weapon in its sheathe, and hurried to join Rayf, who was busy using the Force to pry a panel off the ventilation system. She came to his side to find that he had exposed an opening into the ventilation shafts below, a ready access point for any enterprising intruder. Rayf grinned at her, gesturing into the dark space. "Please, I insist; ladies first."

"You're too kind," Foyi responded sarcastically, sliding into the opening as fluidly as a mucous salamander poured into an empty container. She found herself in the expected ventilation shafts, dark tunnels of thin metal with cool, stale air sending tingling sensations along her _lekku_ and stirring the folds of her cloak. In such a confined space, her armor was beginning to pinch and chafe at the joints, but she let the pain sharpen her focus as she crawled forward, navigating the narrow spaces and blind intersections more by instinct and feeling than by any actual sense of direction. Rayf crawled quietly behind her, so stealthy in his movements, she could barely hear the rustle of cloth and slight _thump_ of his knees against the duct's floor.

Foyi turned a corner and slowed as she crawled to a grate that allowed her to look down into the warehouse's interior. All she could see were shelves stacked high enough for their upper surfaces to be within a meter or so beneath her. They were laden with durasteel crates and plasteel containers and cylinders in orderly piles, with Aurebesh marks and identifying information stenciled into their sides and locks. She could hear voices floating up to her from somewhere else in the warehouse's expansive interior, though they were barely audible enough for her to distinguish that they were in fact voices. She leaned her face down to the grate, peering through and trying to crane her neck so that she might see the beings gathered within, but the multitudinous shelving and cargo dissuaded her from this action. Rayf shifted behind her, then hissed, "Hey, Foyi, as much as I appreciate the view back here, are you going to resume moving at any point soon?"

Foyi glared at him over her shoulder, her _lekku_ twitching in annoyance. She placed her palm against the grating, and the air began to shiver as the Force came to bear upon the crisscrossed metal, which could offer no true resistance to the weight of the universe itself. The grating's bolts popped free with a minute _clang_ , and Foyi lowered the freed barrier carefully to the shelving below. She curled up into a ball, maneuvering herself so that she could slide out of the opening feet first, then landed on a crate atop the shelving below, throwing her arms out momentarily to maintain her balance. The shelf creaked slightly under her added weight, but it did not buckle or sway, as it was built to contain many metric tons of heavy materials.

The Twi'lek crept to the end of the shelf as Rayf dropped down behind her. Had she not felt his presence, had not been attuned to his signature in the Force, she would not have even heard him drop out of the vent and atop the shelf. The two of them crept forward along the shelf's length, crawling over several crates and even a neatly-placed row of DUM-series Pit Droids compressed into their power-saving and storage modes. They were astride merely one of dozens of similar storage arrangements, running the length of the warehouse in even, parallel rows. Beside these rows was another wider, more open area, where landspeeders and repulsortrucks rested, their repulsorlifts still running, as if waiting for their drivers and passengers to return. Toward the front end of the warehouse were a collection of haphazard piles of cargo and cylinders, waiting in queues to be transported out of the building or catalogued along with the other containers sitting on the shelves. By one of these piles were a small collection of tables and chairs, most of which were laden with scanning and sensor equipment, datapads and terminals, and a holoprojector, displaying a hologram in the center of the collection that looked like a series of worms connected at disparate angles, with no overall form or function for the entirety of the design. Standing or sitting around the hologram were the combined forces of Ak-vir Vri and Sho Sura, easily identified by the fact that they kept themselves separated, glaring at each other from either side of the shimmering blue image. A pair of men from Vri's crew were leaning against one of the stacks that obscured the meeting from anyone that might walk through the front doors, whimpering as bacta and stim-shots were applied to their blaster wounds by a GH-7 Medical Analysis Unit, its corroded plating painted in mismatched and garish colors.

The source of the conversation she could barely hear was produced entirely from Ak-vir Vri and Sho Sura. The Weequay's statements were harsh and staccato, underlying the anger her still felt at being fired upon, while the Gossam kept a firm but appeasing tone in his own voice. Foyi carefully laid her body flat, pressing her stomach and chest against the cargo stacked beneath her, then peered over the edge of the shelf, staring at the pair while extending her awareness through the Force. In mere seconds, the conversation began to fill her ears, though she understood little of what was being said. "...not sure I'm ready to go through with this," Ak-vir was saying. "Not now that I'm knowin' yer so intent on shootin' at me an' mine."

Sho Sura's answer was plaintive, but his voice was hard, as if he were subtly suggesting that the Weequay was dangerously close to pushing him too far. "Once again, Vri, that was a malfunction of some kind. My turrets have never been known to do something like that, no." He gestured with a clawed hand at the hologram. "Look, we've been planning this expedition for months now...you're needing Fische's Legacy as much as I am. You really want to put this off again, risk another day, or week, or month where we might invite Zietta's attention and ire?"

Ak-vir said nothing, but his stare was telling. Sho Sura nodded, a smug expression on his face, then gestured upward at the slowly revolving hologram. "As promised, gleaned from all my sources, this is the best map of the Mines that has ever been put together. At least, those parts that are already heavily explored by those before. Now, if Fische's Legacy was anywhere in the tunnels before us, someone would've found it all out already, yes, what with so many previous explorers. But this provides us the starting point for our journey, familiar territory with which we can easily navigate about and strike out into the unknown from. With this as our starting point, and the mining and sensors equipment you and your band have provided, we shall find treasure in little time, I expect."

"We better," Ak-vir replied, crossing his arms over his chest and peering at the hologram. "None of this stuff was being cheap, don't you know. Had to do alotta slum work fer Yuelo an' that creep, 'the Shepherd' to get enough creds to pay fer all this slag."

Sura walked about the table to better inspect the equipment, casting a sly glance at the Weequay. "I heard you ran into some trouble at the Cruelest Cut only earlier today. Drink too much again, yes?"

Ak-vir spat on the floor. "Ha! Barely got a good stiff drink in me 'fore some crazed _schutta_ tried to beat me senseless, wanting to know what I'd done with one o' 'em damned slaves Yuelo 'ad me flyin' around fer the Shepherd. Like hell I was gonna tell her a damned thing, an' I tol' her that fer Yuelo's boys chased her an' her barve of a friend outta there. Made a flamin' mess o' the place, too, righ afore they went runnin' out. Them two better hope they're five parsecs or more from Point Nadir by now, anyway; ya don't jus' piss off a Hutt an' be thinking ta get away wit' it."

Rayf, who had crawled up beside Foyi, balancing on one of the collapsed pit droids, gave her a sidelong glance, and while he said nothing audible, nor imparted any telepathic communication, his expression and presence basically screamed: _He's right, you know_. Foyi merely made a short, dismissive gesture with her _tchin_ ; she realized the great heap of trouble she had landed herself and Rayf in with her recent actions, but firmly believed all of it was worth the rescue and preservation of Tama's life.

Sura looked about nervously, as if he could feel spying, unfriendly eyes on the back of his neck. "Well, as long as your personal issues don't cause trouble for our mutual expedition, we shall be fine, no?" He gave a short, excited clap of his clawed hands. "Then if you've no other business to attend to, my friend, shall we be off? We have much tunnel to cover and explore...to get started immediately is my desire."

Ak-vir snarled under his breath, then turned to the remainder of his crew still standing on their feet without assistance, and made a motion. They began loading up equipment and materials from the table about the holoprojector, their arms laden as they carried the sensors and scanners to a few waiting repulsortrucks in the more open areas of the warehouse. Sho Sura's squad of Ganks began loading other crates that looked suspiciously like containers for weapons and ammunition, as well as explosives and demolitions gear. The Weequay and the Gossam oversaw the preparations, giving separate sets of orders to their own minions, displaying the fact that there was no unified leadership structure in this expedition, and no deep amount of trust between Vri and Sura. Foyi hoped that whatever trust had existed between the two criminals and their gangs had been shaken or even shattered by her excitation of the autoturrets outside. Such a situation could present opportunities for her and Rayf to exploit, even turning the two groups against each other, to Ak-vir's detriment. The conversation she had overheard had been as enlightening as it was frustrating, as she had discovered that Ak-vir Vri and his crew of slaver scum had not been working specifically for the Anjiliacs, as she and Rayf had first believed, but instead for Yuelo the Hutt. Though, by the way Ak-vir had been speaking, it sounded as though Yuelo was simply another middle man for someone or something called "the Shepherd". Who was this "Shepherd"? Was Tama held captive by this mysterious individual, and if so, were both of them still on Point Nadir? She needed to get to Ak-vir again, while he was still up to his nefarious schemes in Point Nadir, and was not contemplating vacating himself and his crew to another part of the galaxy.

She heard the rustle of cloth beside her as Rayf shifted his weight, being unusually noisy about it in the process. She peered down at the Weequay and Gossam, who had both opened one of the crates to be loaded on the speeder truck and were inspecting the vac suits kept within. "We need to follow them," she hissed to the human beside her. When he did not answer immediately, she turned to give him an annoyed expression, but her face twisted with horror long before she could fully form the original expression she intended. For Rayf was busy trying to extricate a squirming bundle wriggling about in his tunic as noiselessly as possible, his face contorted in an almost comical expression of bewilderment, surprise, and discomfort. He slapped his chest wildly for a long, tense moment, as random bulges appeared here and there in his clothing, meandering toward his belt, where he unbuckled the strap to pull his tunic away. Finally, the creature having caught itself in his clothing leapt free with a tiny squawk. The small, bipedal, spotted reptile scrambled out of Rayf's tunic, tripping on the hem of his pants before tumbling free, giving another little squawk as it impacted the edge of the shelf they were all astride and nearly fell off. Foyi recognized it as a gizka, a pest found all across the galaxy, even on Yanibar, which managed to reproduce at alarming rates. The gizka clung to the edge of the shelf, squeaked with a shrill tone, then scurried toward Foyi, as if intent on trying to find its way into her own tunic and armor. Instinctively, Foyi kicked out at it, but the spry creature evaded her limb, jumping clear of the shelf and landing upon another parallel set of shelving.

But Foyi's poorly-aimed kick ended with her heel striking the central eye of the DUM-series Pit Droid that Rayf so precariously balanced upon. There was a brief second for a startled look to flash across Rayf's face before the pit droid beneath him literally sprang to awareness, chittering and clicking in Binary as its deceptive levels of strength bodily threw Rayf clear of the shelf. Foyi winced as both her companion and the droid careened off the top of the shelf, falling several meters to the floor with a cacophonous tumult as their flailing limbs caught against canisters, cargo crates, and cylinders on their way down. Rayf even let out an anguished and high-pitched, " _Damn_ it!", before his expletives were cut short by sudden contact with the permacrete floor. The entire warehouse echoed with the sound of boxes and bodies falling to the floor, metal clanging against permacrete. She peered over the edge of the shelf to see Rayf struggling to extricate himself from a pile of plasteel cylinders and crates under which he had been buried. The pit droid, however, sprang to its feet, and immediately set about picking up several fallen containers of cargo and transporting them back to the shelving, stacking them haphazardly and with no apparent order, the whole time chattering something most likely profound or informative but unintelligible to the uninitiated.

There was only a brief moment of silence before she heard the pounding footsteps of Weequay, Houks, and Ganks as they dropped whatever cargo they were currently loading and came running toward the source of the noise, their blasters and vibroblades drawn. Ak-vir and Sura were both approaching the spot where the pit droid and the fallen Rayf continued to produce copious amounts of noise, the Weequay having drawn his DL-44 and Sura a hold-out blaster from the folds of his robes. Rayf was just standing when almost every blaster wielded in the room swung to aim at him, and Ak-vir let out a growl of both surprise and recognition. "You! The 'ell you doin' here? Didn't ya learn yer lesson last time?!"

Rayf stood woozily, his eyes blinking rapidly as he took in the sight of so many weapons trained on him. He began to drop his hands to his sides, ready to extract the various sections of his wan-shen from his belt and put the weapon together, to dive headfirst into battle. Foyi tensed, reaching for her own discblade, sinking her consciousness into the waters of the Force while calculating how many of the thugs she could incapacitate before they could fire a lethal onslaught of lasers at her friend. But then she realized the situation they were all suddenly thrust into, as well as all the possible things that could go wrong if over two dozen blasters started going off in such a confined space. As much as she wanted to leap down amongst the scum, a meteor of Force and fury, indiscriminately slaughtering the mercenaries until she got her bloody hands on Ak-vir's throat once again.

Foyi could feel the Dark Side clawing at her consciousness, pouring the white-hot waters of rage and fury into her skull like molten lava. And the fact that this sudden, nearly-uncontrollable surge of emotion and dark power welled within her core was enough to bring her back from the brink. Below, Rayf appeared to be just grasping the shortened hilt of the wan-shen's blade, keeping his movements slow so as not to provoke a sudden and lethal response. Foyi acted before he could, raising her hands and shouting, "Hey! Ak-vir!"

Almost all the weapons in the room swiveled up to face her, as they had not even known she was sitting atop the shelf. A few of the Ganks had enough of a mind to keep their blasters aimed at Rayf, however, to dissuade him from trying anything untoward. Foyi had her discblade in hand, and with an exaggerated motion, tossed the weapon to the side, where it fell, clanking and bouncing off cargo containers before deflecting off the pit droid's head and landing on the floor. "Don't shoot. We surrender."

Rayf gave her an incredulous glance, and she projected her feelings through the Force at his presence. Rayf looked down at his blade with a forlorn look, then nodded, tossing the pieces of his wan-shen before him. He raised his hands, saying reluctantly, "Yeah, whatever. We surrender, I guess."

Ak-vir looked confused for a long moment. The Gossam looked up to his partner, bewildered. "Vri? Who're these _murglaks_? You bringing spies to my warehouse?"

The Weequay snarled down at his diminutive partner. "Ya wan' me to remind ya of yer damned turrets outside 'fore you being accusin' me o' spies? These are them what tried to choke me ta death in Yuelo's, probably still looking fer their little lost _schutta_." He returned his attention to the Twi'lek above, then hissed, "Alright, girlie, yer caught good. Why don't you be comin' down from there, as slow and calm-like as yer dumb wormbrain can manage?"

Foyi bit back a retort and leapt free of the shelf, using the Force to cushion her fall, so that she barely felt the shock of impact in her legs as she landed on the permacrete floor. Immediately, a Gank and a Houk seized her arms while kicking out her legs from the back, forcing her to kneel on the floor none-too-gently. Another pair of mercenaries similarly forced Rayf to the floor, but it was the Twi'lek whom Ak-vir approached, a smug grin splitting his lips. "So, _schutta_ , we meet again. And this time, I'm thinking ya ain't gonna be so tough now, are ya?"

Sura waved his hold-out blaster in the Twi'lek's face, his reptilian face twisted into a mask of rage. "You! How did you get in here? This warehouse is thief-proof, it is, it is!"

Foyi gave the Gossam a wry grin. "Maybe when your autoturrets are turned on."

Sura gave Ak-vir a murderous glare, but the Weequay ignored him, pressing the barrel of his heavy blaster pistol against Foyi's forehead. "Look here, wormie, you better be telling me what you being here for if you want ta keep your worms attached to yer head."

Foyi's expression was still resolute. "I came to offer you a last deal. It's a good one, too, so you're gonna want to stick around to hear it."

Ak-vir did not answer but for a raucous guffaw. Foyi took that as incentive to continue, saying, "So here it is: you tell me where I can find my sister, who this 'Shepherd' is that you sold her to, and what Yuelo has to do with it all. In exchange, you get to keep your life, your crew, and your ship, and neither myself or my friend will bother you in the future."

The thugs arrayed around them began to laugh hideously, as if she had told a truly hilarious joke. Neither Ak-vir or Sura joined in the laughter, as they took the threat as seriously as it was meant. Ak-vir shoved his blaster forward, creating a circular depression on the Twi'lek's forehead. "Here's my deal, girlie: I've had about enough of yer intrusions, threats, and Jeedai magic. Remember when ya had yer invisible fists on me heart an' lungs? Well, I can't do anythin' fancy like that, but what I do gots right here is a blaster, an' I'm gonna burn lasers right through yer lungs, then yer heart, then yer brain. Then maybe I'll be getting myself back to making me rich." He glanced at Sura. "Us rich, is what I been meaning to say."

His blaster shifted downward to aim at her chest, and his finger began to depress the trigger. Foyi did not have time to consider her life, consider what would happen to Tama with her sister murdered in the middle of a warehouse in a shadowport that did not officially exist. But Sura's hand reached out and pushed the barrel of Ak-vir's blaster so that it pointed at the floor. Ak-vir turned an angry gaze upon the Gossam, who returned it with equal vehemence. "Hold it, Vri," Sura was saying. "I don't want these two dead. These two may prove useful to us."

"Useful how, exactly?"

"As in being the key to getting us Fische's treasure!"

Ak-vir looked at Foyi first, then at Rayf, and finally back to Foyi once more. "Yeah? An' whadda the two o' ya know about Fische's Legacy an' the Mines?"

Before either one of them could answer, Sura hissed in the back of his throat, a vociferation denoting exasperation. "That's not what I meant, Vri, yeah? I'm talking about the creatures living in the Mines, that ones that kill so many people who dare to travel those tunnels. Why should we ask our men to risk their lives an' limbs against the unknown when perfectly good bait and distraction falls right in our laps?"

Ak-vir gave Sura an incredulous glance. "'Cause...we're payin' 'em?"

"You didn't mention no monsters guarding the treasure, Cap'n," came the Zygerrian's response. One of the Ganks stepped closer to his Gossam employer, and while he made no sound, his body language spoke as loudly as the Zygerrian had, with similar concerns. One of the Houks also chimed in, saying, "Yeah, I've heard the tales, same as everyone else. There's supposed ta be somethin' in the Mines what kills anyone gets too close to finding Fische's treasure!"

Ak-vir grunted angrily. "Yeah, that's Zietta's thugs, you Hutt-lickers! Everyone knows those stories are just being tol' to give weight ta Zietta's orders and threats ta stay outta the Mines! I thought we all agreed we weren't gonna let that bloated piece of _poodoo_ to scare you womp rats!"

"All the same," came the Zygerrian's reply. "I think I'm speakin' for all of us by saying we wouldn't mind a little extra insurance against bloodthirsty critters that may or may not exist."

Most of the gathering was now staring at Ak-vir and Sura, weapons wavering between the captured intruders and the leaders of this expedition. The Weequay looked down at the Twi'lek, murder in his dark eyes, but after a long moment's hesitation, he withdrew the DL-44 and slipped it into his holster. He gestured, and Foyi and Rayf's hands were wrenched behind their backs, where stuncuffs were slapped over their wrists before being roughly hauled to their feet. "Very well," Ak-vir was saying as the pair was shoved and drug toward the repulsortrucks. "We meetin' any of these mythical creatures yer all pissin' yer pants about, we'll chuck these two first an' head the other way. We meetin' any of Zietta's boys askin' what we're doin' in off-limits areas, we throw these two at 'em for a distraction."

Foyi and Rayf soon found themselves bundled in the back of one of the repulsortrucks, surrounded by crates of equipment and Ganks just itching to use their blasters on them if they attempted escape or violence. The speeder truck, a Trast A-A5 model, was like an armored cargo crate all its own, its cargo hold a rectangular interior with benches that folded out of the walls, the middle of the floor occupied by the cylinders and crates holding equipment necessary for this expedition of thieves, mercenaries, and murderers. The pair of prisoners were slammed down on one of the benches and shoved against the wall, where they sat facing the Ganks assigned to watch them. They sat there uncomfortably as the vehicle roared to life, the repulsors beneath their feet sending shuddering vibrations through the floor. There was a jolt as the A-A5 began moving forward, its unseen pilot taking them on another forced voyage across Point Nadir's expansive chambers, caverns, and tunnels.

Rayf stared at the two Ganks for a long, tense moment, but the aliens did not appear to be watching them too closely, perhaps secure in the fact that there was nowhere to run to, and not enough room to fight in such an enclosed space. He leaned against Foyi's shoulder, dropping his voice so that only she could hear his whisper. "I don't know what your plan is, sweetheart, but I hope it's a good one, 'cause I'm not seeing a lot of bright sides to our current situation."

"Honestly, I don't really have a plan. I'm just making it up as we go along."

Rayf sighed. "You know, I could have gone the next few hours without knowing that. Spend the last bit of my life under the blissful, ignorant confidence that my most capable partner had the best plan in the galaxy in her back pocket. Now I'll get to die glum. Maybe I could be so depressed that it sours my meat, and the monsters in the Mines won't chew on me too long."

Foyi rolled her eyes. She truly was not remotely in the mood for Rayf's sarcasm, but she tried to keep her anger stifled. "Look, if we had all started shooting, either we would have ended up dead, or Ak-vir would have, and neither of those options would have helped Tama. I thought surrendering was the option that would not result in too many unnecessary deaths."

"You couldn't have known that."

She shrugged. "I trusted the Force."

Rayf chuckled humorlessly. "Now you sound like one of the old Jedi Masters. Like Tholme. Or Zao. I think he was more infuriating."

Foyi's expression darkened. "Don't compare me to the Jedi."

"You've expressed discomfort and anger at the mention of Jedi before. Why's that?"

Foyi shook her head, grimacing. "That's not important right now. What is this treasure these _sleemos_ keep talking about? What's Fische's Legacy?"

Rayf stared at her a moment, as if deciding whether he should press the issue or answer the questions meant to deflect his own. He glanced at the Ganks again. "Fische's Legacy is the fabled treasure trove left behind by Point Nadir's original 'founder', if you will: Salovan Fische, a Corellian space pirate who used this asteroid as a base for himself and his crew, and are responsible for most of the infrastructure and architecture of its interior. He and his crew of pirates successfully used the asteroid as a hideout where they could store their booty and launch raids from. Stories go that the pirates were trying to make this place into their own little oasis on the Outer Rim, but after a few failed raids and the fact that Fische lived in luxury while the rest of the asteroid had poor living conditions, his crew mutinied and left him marooned on the comet. It wasn't for another century or so before the Anjiliacs took over this place, and eventually built the shadowport the two of us have come to love so much, but stories say that Fische either gathered or discovered a disgusting amount of wealth and hid it in the deepest, darkest part of the Mines, the tunnels that are least explored and most dangerous part of this entire comet. Zietta and her Anjiliacs have banned anyone from exploring the Mines and looking for Fische's treasure, but that doesn't deter everyone, as you can plainly see."

"And what's all this about 'monsters'?"

"Remember I said the Mines were dangerous? Most who venture in don't come out, so there's rumors that there are some sort of animals native to this comet that hide in the shadows of the tunnels. Locals call 'em Nadir spiders, though whether they actually exist or are arachnids of some type has never been verified as far as I'm aware. Others claim that Fische's ghost is somewhere still in the Mines, and it's he who makes anyone stupid enough to go down there disappear forever. Either way, if there's something down there that likes chewing on errant treasure hunters, you and I are going to be the first to find out."

One of the Ganks had stood during their conversation, and without warning, swung the stock of his blaster rifle into the side of Rayf's face. He grunted and spat blood, but made no cries of pain as he straightened, giving the Gank a defiant glare. The armored alien jabbed a threatening finger at him, then went back to his bench and his partner and seated himself once more. Foyi gave Rayf a concerned look, to which he offered a brave smile, already an ugly bruise creeping along his jaw. "How 'bout I make the plans from now on?" he whispered, risking the ire of the Ganks.

Foyi merely shook her head, and glared daggers at the Ganks and the other mercenaries in the speeder truck. She would not let this detour deter her from her goal, and Ak-vir would pay for all the harm and pain he had caused Tama, Rayf, and herself.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Tama was awoken by the bony hands of Nuri shaking her shoulder. The Twi'lek snapped back to reality when her gaze met the wide, fearful, violet eyes of the Zabrak girl, and she struggled to a seating position, her palms slipping on the permacrete beneath her due to the moisture and slick moss that grew across it. Her first thought was that someone had eaten the rest of the food they had been rationing together for the last several days, and she was both surprised and relieved to find the ration pack still sitting in the middle of the pit's floor. She then turned her attention upward, to the single burning light shining down through the mouth of the pit. As she gazed at that light, she realized that it was growing larger, more brilliant, not because it was growing in size or luminosity, but because she was drawing closer to it. There was a grinding, clanking noise in the pit that sent shivers through the permacrete, vibrations that caused her weary bones to ache. The cries of the other children awakening in fear from their fitful slumber reached her ears, their dismay and trepidation at what possible new horrors may be awaiting them now buffeting her through the Force. "Wha—What's happening?" she croaked, her dry tongue not quite responding to her attempts at making intelligible speech.

"We're moving up!" Nuri hissed, her voice quavering with fear. "The floor's some kind of turbolift, and we're moving up! Closer to _him_!"

Tama reached out to the Zabrak, her regard still fixated on the light coming down to meet her. Nuri seized her hand and gripped it so tight with her weak, skeletal fingers that Tama was certain both of their hands would be crushed by the effort. She could see multiple shapes moving at the edge of the pit, more skeletal figures silhouetted by the light, accompanied by larger, bulkier ones with presences no less threatening. These figures materialized into no less than six B1 Battle Droids, their carapaces pitted and scarred by warfare that had ceased over a decade before. Their tri-fingered hands clutched E-11 Blaster Rifles and A280 Blaster Rifles, aimed unwaveringly at the children rising up to meet them, despite the swaying of their unsteady forms. They were accompanied by B2 Super Battle Droids, their stocky, darkly-armored frames similarly carbon scored and refurbished as the results of warfare, their right arms raised threateningly, the barrels of wrist-mounted blasters aimed at the children's heads.

The lift beneath them ground to a halt, level with the floor above, and the droids immediately closed in, either jabbing them with the ends of their blasters or hauling the weakest upright, all with the intent of getting everyone to their feet. Tama and Nuri provided each other strength, as both of them doubted either one could stand on her own. The droids made unintelligible, inconsequential buzzing noises with malfunctioning vocabulators, then motioned their young prisoners toward the only exit from the room, the diagonally-opening door through which Tama had been drug through. They formed a ragged caravan of emaciated, weeping forms as they shambled down the hallway outside, some of the droids marching with heavy, clanging feet ahead of them, and others behind, giving generous pushes and jabs with their blaster rifles. The hall was dark save for the infrequent lights offered by crimson auxiliary glowstrips outlining the ceiling. They passed similar doors leading to unseen portions of the complex, spaced at regular intervals and with narrow contours, suggesting this may have once been a military prison or internment facility during the Clone Wars. The droids kept them going at a brisk pace, and any child that collapsed or fell from exhaustion and malnourishment was bodily hauled to their feet and hit savagely with the stock of a rifle. Tama carefully reached out with the Force, trying to get a feeling, a premonition of where they were being herded, and for what purpose. She met only the impassable wave of darkness that seemed to pervade the planet, as well as unfriendly consciousness hovering just at the edge of her extrasensory perceptions, a consciousness she knew only too well as their collective captor and tormentor.

The droids ahead of the troupe opened another door large enough for two humanoids to walk abreast, the doors sliding open with a squeal that was piercing to the ears. Beyond was another roughly rectangular room that gave Tama the impression that it was some sort of reception area. Or a security checkpoint. On one side was a large transparisteel window through which could be seen the remains of a security office, the terminals and consoles within having been invaded by pervasive mold colonies and sizable fungi, having spilled through from a humongous, dripping hole in the ceiling. On the other side of the room was the largest of the doors Tama had seen in these ruins, which stood open, leading to the wilderness outside and the fading light of the planet's sun. The droids did a smart, right-angled turn and marched the prisoners through the door outside, into an enclosure that was little more than a cage, having been poorly constructed of salvaged poles of durasteel and wired fencing strung between. The cage was large enough to hold a group three times their size, and the gaps between the wired fences allowed them generous views of the world outside their prison. The ground predominantly consisted of dark mud, occasionally bisected by ruts, ravines, and thin, babbling creaks of algae-laden water. Some areas of the ground had been lined with permacrete, as if in a vain attempt against nature to establish streets and sidewalks for sentient habitation, though most of these permacrete slabs had deep fractures through which thrust hardy alien flora. All around them, soaring into the sky, were clusters of prefab structures of alloys and durasteel, their simple but solid designs belying a military function, or at least residents with martial sensibilities in architecture. They were in the midst of some kind of city, which dominated the horizon all about them, a city that had been abandoned probably as long as the facility they had just emerged from had been. Most of the buildings showed extensive carbon scoring, blaster burns, and the torn and rent edges caused by explosive forces. Rubble had long since sank in the mud, and virulent molds and fungi grew up the sides of most of the edifices, further eroding the remains of sentient civilization the world seemed so adamant to deny the existence of. Amongst the buildings lay the remains of landspeeders and gunships, droid parts and broken blasters. Growing up all around these, thrusting themselves stubbornly through the mud, were a menagerie of fungal species, from blue mushrooms that appeared to be massive, blooming flowers, to the pallid flesh of bulbous flowers that swayed back and forth ominously, to spires of glassy bulbs stacked continuously atop each other and reaching toward the sun. The turgid air was thick with spores and alien scents, and dark clouds tried to mask the presence of the dying sunlight as it streamed down upon them with golden beams of murky luminescence.

The planet around them was both beautiful and terrifying at once, the thick jungle of fungi as ethereal and mystifying as it was ominous and forbidding. Tama could feel the vast amount of life as an uncoordinated, entropic assault on all her senses, the presences of millions of lifeforms rubbing, smashing, and caressing her own. The presence of the Dark Side was even stronger here on the surface than it had been in her cell or the pit below. Almost every glowing signature of life in the Living Force felt sick, diseased, tainted, not by intelligent submission to the darker aspect of the Force, but rather through infection by proximity. The world's ecosystem was so alive and intertwined, its overall signature in the Force was like walking on the surface of a blinding star, and yet something had happened here, something not far removed in the past, to taint that light, and by association and symbiosis, almost all life on the planet. There was definitely something wrong with this world, and she found herself shaking again, and not from physical exhaustion or lack of food.

The droids halted their advance, two of the Super Battle Droids breaking from the formation of the group to stand guard to either side of the door in the far side of the cage. It was a simple metal door composed of more gridded wiring, placed on hinges with a rudimentary keypad that had been hastily installed. Meanwhile, one of the B1 Battle Droids walked back the way they had come, and triggering the keypad on the contours of the large entrance to the facility, the doors slid into place with a grinding finality, locking them within the cage's confines.

What came next was expected, but no less debilitating, as their captor, their self-professed "Savior", invaded their minds once more. _And here we find ourselves. Fire and blood, blood and fungus. It didn't have to be this way, no no no take it away, it doesn't want it, it doesn't need it anymore. Your darkness could have relented, could have shown itself in the depths, when all hope was lost. We could have saved you all from your sins, could have bared them, satisfied the Universe. Oh the craving, the blood, help us persevere. Pain pain pain. Pain must come now. Pain and blood and fright. You will find yourselves free but trapped, trapped by walls, by sin. Pretty, evil, rotting children must learn to survive by letting go of their inner iniquities, but embracing the pain, embracing the Savior's healing, consuming touch. The doors will open, and you will all go forth. There is food, there are weapons. Survive you must, but only one may leave after revealing the darkness. Choose wisely. Choose with blood and fire. This is your final crucible, the trial never meant to be used, but your horrid, rotting souls brought this down upon your iniquitous heads. Rise and learn. Rise and die. Bring them to us, let us drink of the blood and sin_ There was a lengthy, inexplicable pause, then a final pronouncement. _Let your final crucible begin._

Tama's vision came back into focus, the diseased and darkling weight of their captor's presence having removed itself from her mind like a heavy burden being lifted from her shoulders. The droids were all moving again, the ones behind the children ushering them forward with blaster barrels. The pair of Super Battle Droids apparently received a signal the prisoners could not hear, and they opened the swinging gate to allow passage of the children, to give them access to the outside. Those who hesitated were violently shoved forward, until all the prisoners had been thrown into the mud outside the gate, some falling flat on their faces. None of the droids followed them outside, content to slam the gate closed behind them and watch as they picked themselves up.

The Arconan girl came to Tama's side, wringing her hands so furtively she was causing herself physical pain. "Well? N-Now what do we do?"

"The voice said something about there being food and weapons out here somewhere," Nuri recalled. "Maybe we just have to find them."

"If we stick together, I'm sure we can find whatever caches our kidnapper has left out here for us in this sick game," Tama responded, trying to keep her voice steady while she swiveled her head. There were discordant notes sounding continuously in her ears; the Force was trying to warn her of approaching danger, though she could not identify the source.

"If we stick together?" came the Elomin boy's shrill reply. "It also said only _one_ of us could leave!"

"And we're going to listen to the commands of our kidnapper?!" Tama yelled, whirling on him with an angry gleam in her eyes. "You want to go along with whatever disgusting ritual he's trying to have us perform, all for his twisted fantasies?"

"Maybe if we had earlier, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in right now!" he shouted back.

"And if we had, you might not be still standing here, and I wouldn't have to listen to your flaming whining!"

Nuri tugged on Tama's sleeve, and the Twi'lek whirled on her, her anger bubbling forth, her mouth opening for an angry retort. But Nuri was trying to get everyone's attention with an unintelligible shout, her finger pointing to a building across the muddy thoroughfare from their position. The edifice she had indicated appeared to have once been a warehouse of no small size, though the cargo it currently possessed was no doubt far more terrifying than whatever cargo it had originally been designed to hold. For the warehouse's main hangar doors had ground open with a ponderous shriek of rusted, mold-encrusted metal, and from the darkness within emerged an abomination Tama could not have imagined in her worst nightmares. The creature stood over three meters in height, possessing a wedge-shaped head that swept back into a narrow crest. Its dark, beady eyes peered at them from beneath a prominent brow ridge, its cruel face sweeping down to a lipless maw full to bursting with razor-sharp fangs. Its head sat upon a long, sinuous neck that connected to an ovoid body of blue-green scales. Emerging at equidistant points from the body and suspending it a few meters off the ground were three pairs of triple-jointed limbs containing vestigial but dexterous fingers, one of which on each limb elongating into a large, wickedly curved claw that it used to walk upon, like it was balancing on stilts. Tama desperately wracked her brain for the name of this creature, for she remembered it featuring prominently in one of the darker stories Pash had shared with her regarding the world of Vendaxa. _Acklay_. A true beast of nightmare, and even as she stared, horrified, the creature let out an ear-piercing, soul-rending shriek and began its horrible, stilted stride toward them.

Despite Tama's attempts over the last several days to foster a sense of loyalty and camaraderie amongst the children, it took them only a few seconds of staring at the charging acklay before the group scattered in every conceivable direction. The children ran screaming in hoarse voices, sprinting for the nearest buildings and possible spots of cover with which they might hide from the monstrosity bearing down upon them. Tama tugged on Nuri's hand, and together the pair of them began a dead run for a building in the opposite direction of the approaching acklay, providing each other support and speed where either one of them would not be able to manage such rapidity alone. Tama turned her head to glance back over her shoulder, and saw with dismay that the Arconan girl had run directly into the exterior of the cage, pulling at and banging upon the wiring of the gate, begging the merciless droids to let her back in the facility that had been their prison. She was so consumed with fear and her desire to get back inside the prison that she did not even hear the acklay approach, nor the rush of wind as one of its forelegs whipped through the air above her head and came down with the force of a starship falling from orbit. Tama slowed to a stop as Nuri pulled relentlessly on her arm, enraptured by the horror of the scene behind her, the acklay's forward claw smashing downward. The heavy tip slammed into the Arconan's spine, ripping through her thin frame and emerging from her stomach a second before she was flattened. The scream that the girl elicited was shrill, anguished, and horrified simultaneously as she was ground into the mud, the acklay twisting the claw embedded in her spine back and forth, as if to make certain she was properly skewered and attached to the creature's claw. And even as the girl's pitiful screams became inarticulate moans and whimpers, the acklay's head snapped forward at the end of its lengthy neck, its maw of protruding fangs seizing her head and upper torso. With a cracking of bone and a fleshy tearing noise that could be heard across the street, the acklay tore the upper portion of the girl's body free, the body pulling apart at the point where its claw had skewered her. The acklay snapped its head back, opening its mouth and swallowing noisily as the hunk of ripped gore and splashing blood that had been the Arconan girl disappeared down its gullet. It let out a coughing, choking noise, then turned its bloody maw around to look directly at the the transfixed Twi'lek, unable to look away from the creature's horrendous consumption. The acklay shook its foreleg, tossing away the girl's lower body, where it impacted the side of the cage and spattered blood against the carapaces of the droids still standing by passively and without concern. The acklay let out another bellow and began striding toward her, its claws sending up splashes of mud, blood-laden saliva dripping in ropy threads from its jaws as they opened and closed in great snaps.

Tama was finally shaken from her reverie by Nuri's iron grip on her shoulder, the Zabrak screaming, "Tama! Wake up!" The Twi'lek then turned and sprinted along the street, the Zabrak girl angling their flight toward a large, squat building that looked like it could have withstood a direct orbital bombardment, which had not stopped stubborn fungi from shoving themselves through multiple fractures in the walls and the roof. But Tama's eyes were drawn from the destination Nuri intended, to a cluster of thick, fungal jungle growing over what had once been a main thoroughfare for the ruined city. Tama jerked her newfound friend's hand sharply to the right, trying to pull her toward the thick tangle of mushrooms and alien flora attempting to overthrow the previous efforts of civilization. Nuri resisted at first, but Tama only pulled harder, gasping through her winded lungs, "No...the jungle! We'll lose it...in there!"

Nuri offered no complaints as the pair of them turned away from the building, leaping over a heap of rubble consisting of broken permacrete and scrapped droid parts, weaving in between the stalks of grand fungi and exotic mushrooms as the conquering jungle grew thicker about them. Tama reached her free hand out to shove aside several stalks of fungus, slipping in between the spaces her movements provided, pulling Nuri along behind her. She could feel the vibrations shivering through the mud as the acklay approached, its breath coming in great, ravenous chuffs, letting out the occasional trilling call, as if trying to flush them out of cover with its terrifying vociferations. The sight of the Arconan girl being ripped to shreds incessantly ran through her mind. She felt anguished to know that she could not remember the girl's name, no matter how hard she searched her memory.

She slipped between two stalks of the transparent, bulbous plants she had no name for and immediately ran into something solid and unyielding to her advance that sent stuttering tingles and vibrations through her body. Tama bounced back from the barrier that was suddenly in her way, staring in confusion at the purple-tinged shimmering in the air before her, something that reminded her of vast heat distortions she had seen during the inhospitable summers of Yanibar. She stared at the nearly-invisible wall before her, the wall that prevented her and Nuri from escaping the city and into the wilderness beyond. Her exhausted, horror-stricken mind was still slowly attempting to comprehend what it was that was blocking their flight, trying to deny the existence of such things, when Nuri seized her upper arm. "It's ray shielded!" she screamed in her ear, jolting the Twi'lek from her stupor. "We have to turn back!"

Tama snapped back to reality. She had never encountered ray shields before, but she was aware of their existence, and knew there was no way the malnourished and poorly-equipped girls were getting through the force field. She whirled about to see the acklay kicking and stalking through the fungus around them, looming over the flora, blood still dripping from its jaws like macabre rain. It gave a triumphant, predatory shriek that sent knives of pain through her skull, and raised both of its forelegs, the claws hurtling down at its prey. But fear and insatiable instinct for survival had given Tama and Nuri the strength and speed they had been lacking, and so they threw themselves inside the monster's reach, rolling in the mud and spores while the acklay's claws thundered into the soft ground behind them. The acklay roared in frustration as the girls picked themselves off the ground and sprinted underneath the creature's bulk, running between its widespread legs and angling for the building that Nuri had originally wanted to use for cover.

But the acklay would not be evaded for long. Though the move was awkward, the acklay spun completely around in seconds, then loped after them, screaming its primal hunger and fury at having been avoided. The building loomed before them, but there were no doors immediately available, so Nuri scooped up a chunk of broken permacrete and hurled it as hard as she could through the brittle, streaked glass of a nearby window. The throw was rather pathetic due to the loss of most of her strength, but the glass was old and had only barely survived the ravages of time, erosion, and the jungle intact, and so offered no resistance against the impromptu projectile. It shattered into dozens of pieces, leaving ragged edges of glass surrounding a dark portal inside. Tama helped Nuri through the window first, neither one of them having any time to clear the shards of glass before diving through. Tama felt some of the glass slicing through the stretched, pallid flesh of her arms and hands as she rolled through the window. There was a rush of air and a horrendous snapping just behind her trailing foot, and she whirled around to see the acklay's bloody maw filling the window's view. She scooted back from the broken window, her hands and posterior sliding across shards of glass, as the acklay lowered its head to give the two girls a disdainful glare, as if it were profoundly disappointed in them for not allowing it to consume them in entirety. As she watched, the acklay's head swung out of view, followed by a flash of its claws stabbing the ground as the creature turned around. Then came the staccato vibrations of the acklay moving, and by the diminishing impact of those vibrations, Tama assumed the acklay had been discouraged by their escape and scampered off looking for prey that would not put up so much of a chase.

Tama let out a heavy exhalation of both exertion and relief, then looked down at the new lacerations across her hands and wrists. They were merely superficial cuts, small beads and rivulets of blood leaking from the slashed skin. She ignored her wounds and looked to Nuri, who was kneeling beside her, similarly gasping. Judging by the blood staining her knees where her hands had touched, she had sliced her palms open on the shredded glass, but otherwise looked no worse for wear. Tama scooted closer to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, which caused them to meet each others gaze. "Are you...okay, Nuri?"

The Zabrak nodded at first, then shook her head as a cloud of memory darkened her features. More than likely she was thinking of the Arconan girl who had met such a grisly fate. "Tama...why is this happening? Wh—What did we do to deserve this nightmare?"

Tama squeezed her shoulder and slowly rose to her feet. She could feel pain, fear, despair, and anger all mixing and bubbling like a boiling durni stew within her gut, emotions that threatened to rise and envelope her in their chaos. "We did nothing," she replied, her voice dripping with barely-controlled rage. "We were merely unfortunate enough to be the ones forced to play this psychopath's sick games. No matter what he thinks we've done that's so bad in our lives, none of it justifies him throwing us into this...this arena with monsters like _that_. This is...cruel, and evil, beyond imagining. No one deserved to die like..."

"Like Zheeg did," Nuri finished for her, referencing the Arconan girl. Tama felt another stab of self-loathing that she had not bothered to remember the girl's name.

The Twi'lek offered her Zabrak friend a hand, then hauled her to her feet. Together, the pair of them turned about to examine their new surroundings. They appeared to be inside what was left of an old apartment complex, one having been ravaged by stray cannon fire and the pyrotechnic damage of grenades. Through the holes in the walls and ceiling, twisting about the burn marks of carbon scoring and blaster scars, were dozens of species of molds and fungi, slowly breaking the entire complex down to its constituent parts. They were in a hallway that led off from the main lobby and reception area several meters to their left, lined by doors leading to storage and equipment closets, as well as openings for stairwells and turbolifts. What remained of the tiled floor was splattered with mud, tiny meandering streams of water, and hardy colonies of mold. Rubble from collapsed walls and and sagging ceilings dotted the floor, accompanied by dismembered limbs of battle droids, old missile casings from faulty explosives, and even pieces of armor that had once belonged to clone troopers. Tama hobbled over to a chestpiece that may have been white at one time, but had become a sickly greenish brown in color. She momentarily held it up to her own chest, curious to see how it might fit, but then noticed the sizable hole that had been blown in the sternum, the burned, ragged edges the result of a well-placed blaster bolt. She dropped the piece of armor in the mud, banishing the thought from her mind almost as soon as she had had it; it was too large for her emaciated, teenaged torso anyway.

Nuri was bracing her palms on her knees, gasping for air, the sprint having taken more out of her malnourished body than it had first appeared. "What do we do now? Do we just...find somewhere to hide until...that monster is gone?"

Tama was shaking her head before the Zabrak finished her sentence, her _lekku_ twitching negatively. "Something tells me this isn't the kind of 'game' where we get to sit it out." She was about to speak more, but was interrupted by the far-off scream of the acklay, which was suddenly answered by a chorus of roars, shrieks, and howls from a multitude of predatory throats. "Something else tells me that we won't get a chance to hide," she continued with a mixture of fear and sarcasm in her voice. "That acklay's not the only thing out there that will flush us out if we stay in one place too long."

"So, what do we _do_?"

Tama gritted her teeth. "We keep moving. We find food, shelter, and weapons. We find the others, gather everyone, and together, we find a way out of these ruins."

A sadistic snicker seeped into her brain, echoing throughout the darkest recesses of her mind. Tama grimaced against the migraine it stabbed through the temples of her skull, and tried to make herself small in the Force, so small she practically erased her own existence from the fabric of the galaxy. She may have been merely in training to become a Zeison Sha, but on a world occupied by the Empire specifically looking for remnants of the Force-using tradition birthed there, stealth in the Force was one of the first things she had been taught, even before her parents died. She glanced up at the ceiling, as if their captor who claimed to be their savior were standing right above them, leering down upon them.

Nuri's face was set in a determined grimace. "Our 'Savior' seems to have doubts about that last part. He did say only one of us would be allowed to go free."

Tama snorted derisively. "As if he's given us any indication that he'll actually allow any of us to go. He may have thrown us in this situation, he may control the droids and when the monsters are let out to hunt us, but that doesn't mean we have to play by all his rules. We seem to be enclosed in a perimeter of ray shields preventing us from losing ourselves in the jungle, where we might actually have a fighting chance. If there are ray shields, that means there's a power supply somewhere, and if there's a power supply, there are controls to shut it down. If we work together, we can discover where this power supply and its controls are, and we can shut down the ray shields. The only reason this sithspawn claims that one person will be allowed to go free is because he expects us to kill each other off and feed each other to the monsters to get the food and weapons we need. If we devolve to that level of savagery, we've 'revealed our inner darkness', and he wins." She slammed one bleeding fist into her open palm. "And I'll be _damned_ if I let him make a murderer out of me."

Nuri nodded her assent, the fear in her violet eyes being replaced by determination and simmering rage. "You're right. If anyone is going to die by my hands today, it's going to be this barve who threw us in here; I think his goons killed my father when we were ambushed, and he has to answer for that."

Tama's thoughts slipped to her last glimpses of Foyi, running to her rescue from the Houks, Weequay, and Zygerrian of Captain Vri's crew. Her sister had been like a force of nature, the Force churning about her like an unstoppable tempest as she had charged them with blaster rifle and discblade, shrieking her name. Tama knew not if her sister had survived that encounter with her kidnappers. Something deep down inside her suggested that she had, but she could not know for sure. Hope told her that Foyi was somewhere out in the galaxy right now, overturning every particle of interstellar dust and space debris between wherever-the-hell-this-was and Yanibar in a neverending quest to find her. But the fear that twisted her empty, distended guts told her that Foyi was dead, and that no rescue would come. She could feel the Dark Side now, its suffocating pervasiveness on the planet gnawing at the edges of her conscience, whispering assertions that her only surviving family member was dead, either in the snows of Yanibar or in some seedy bar or cantina on another world of outlaws, thieves, and murderers. She felt rage and self-pity wallowing within her, like that same boiling stew of unchecked emotion was now frothing over to fill her form with every mental and spiritual pain and anguish she could imagine.

Tama gasped and took a physical step back, as if moving back from the imaginary precipice she now looked down from. She could not give in to fear and hatred; if she answered the Dark Side's incessant call now, then their "Savior" had already won. She refused to give him the pleasure, and she refused to submit.

"It does us no good to dwell on such dark thoughts and maybes that may never come to pass," came Tama's response, as much for the benefit of herself as it was for Nuri. "Our primary focus should be trying to get as many people out of here as possible. No matter what this son of a barve says, no one here has done anything worthy of such sadistic and heinous punishment."

Nuri opened her mouth to say something, but her words were lost when something immense, heavy, and angry slammed into the wall that contained the window through whence they had entered. The shockwave caused by this made both of the girls stumble, then they covered their ears as another ear-piercing shriek erupted around them, the enraged scream of the acklay returning to flush out its prey. The wall shook again and fractures spidered up the age-weakened walls of duracrete, while spores, dust, and grit filled the air. Tama coughed after inhaling a lungful of those spores, then waved Nuri forward. "Run! _Run!_ "

Both girls ran toward the lobby even as the wall collapsed behind them, humongous hunks of permacrete falling in a tumbling heap on the spot they had been standing only seconds before. From the billowing cloud of dust and spores materialized the dark form of the acklay, its crested head rearing back as it swung to face the sound of their running feet. The acklay let out a bloodthirsty, victorious growl and skittered forward, ducking its head and body in the cramped confines as it pursued the two girls.

Tama and Nuri made it to the reception area, then immediately turned for the main entrance, its rusted, nonfunctional doors standing partially open. They slipped between the doors and into the dusky exterior, the viscous mud and grasping fungi sucking at their ragged shoes and boots as they ran across the broken street. They heard the shudder of permacrete and the squeal of durasteel as the entry hall for the apartment was torn outward, the acklay bursting forth like a monster from an enormous, cold egg. The creature was momentarily stalled as it picked its way through the rubble, but that was all the time Tama and Nuri needed to disappear around the corner of another building, one that looked to have been a shop for the repair and maintenance of landspeeders. Tama grabbed a fistful of Nuri's tunic and hurled them both in a thick cluster of fungal growth. She covered Nuri's body with her own, ignoring the thick spores accumulating in her throat and nostrils, the stench of unwashed and poorly-maintained bodies, and concentrated, putting all of her mental focus into this single act. She called upon the Force, letting it fill every sense she possessed, every cell in her body. Then she turned it inward, concentrating on imagining herself and Nuri smaller and smaller, as if they were physically shrinking to a tenth of their size, until they left all reality behind and became nothing.

The miniature quakes caused by the acklay's advance grew closer, until they stepped mere meters from Tama and Nuri's hiding place. Nuri let out a wheezing breath of air, but the Twi'lek clamped her hand over the Zabrak's mouth and sank within the Force, willing them to disappear from all sight, sound, and smell. She could feel the acklay drawing closer, could imagine its head swinging down from on high. She could hear the great inhalations it was taking, its hot, rotten breath as its nose drew within a meter of her back. She felt something wet, viscous, and sticky drip on the back of her tunic, and the acklay gave a low growl.

Then there came the halting vibrations of the acklay, and the proximity of its immense, horrifying head grew greater in range until it was present no more. The beast's footfalls drew to a distance where they could not be heard or felt, and the acklay was gone, foiled once again.

Tama loosened her grip on Nuri's mouth, and the Zabrak let out a long, shaking breath. The Twi'lek let out her own breath that she had been holding, and let her concentration and her hold on the Force loosen. The girls helped each other to their feet, but they kept themselves crouched, where the tall fronds of fungus and effulgent mushrooms kept them hidden from view. Nuri gasped in a combination of shock, fear, and exhilaration, then gripped Tama's hand and squeezed so tightly, she threatened to break it. "Thank you...that thing almost got us..."

Tama merely nodded, too overwhelmed to speak. Her entire body was quivering, not with fear, but from the mental exertion it had required to use the Force in such a way, when her physical form was so weakened. She cautiously peered over the tips of the mushrooms and fungal stalks that shrouded her and Nuri, and caught the stubby tail and one of the back legs of the acklay disappearing around the corner of a skyscraper almost a half kilometer away. The creature could move much faster than its oddly configured body would suggest. Her eyes scanned their immediate surroundings, the moldering buildings and haphazard arms of jungle undergrowth seeping into the city, the ruined speeders and the remains of a Trade Federation AAT repulsor tank. Her eyes paused on one of the closest buildings, a low, stout building whose exterior mostly consisted of transparisteel windows smeared with mud and sticky spores. What could be seen through those windows were the remains of a lengthy counter and a variety of tables, stools, and seating arrangements mostly made for humanoids that must have been smaller than the average Twi'lek or Zabrak. The establishment appeared to have once been a diner or bar of some sort. She tapped Nuri's shoulder, then gestured to call her attention to the building. "What does that building look like to you?"

Nuri scrutinized it. "Maybe...a cafe? Restaurant? Cantina?"

The Twi'lek nodded. "That was what I thought. If there's food anywhere in this old city..."

"...it's probably there," Nuri finished the thought. She craned her neck to look above the mushrooms, and upon seeing no signs of the acklay or any other such beasts they occasionally heard the calls of, got up into a ready crouch. "Alright, let's go for it."

The two girls scurried across the open ground, ducking between crashed vehicles and piles of rubble, trying not to stay out in the open, muddy street for too long. They reached the diner in a few moments, slipping in through a door that stood partially open. The door was light enough that together, they were able to slide it open on its track and grant them enough room to enter the establishment. The interior of the building was dark, its atmosphere sticky, musky, and damp. Mold grew over the once plush upholstery of the seats. Screens most likely connected to the HoloNet or war propaganda stations had once hung on the walls, but now sat in ragged piles of shards along the walls. If either of the two girls had chosen to stand upright, they would have stood well above the chairs, tables, and main counter where long lost customers had ordered food and drinks. The diner appeared to have been built for aliens that never grew much more than a meter and a half in height, and besides the garish and cheerful colors that decorated the diner's interior, there was little indication left as to what species of clientele the establishment had catered to.

Tama stumbled over something long and cylindrical lying on the floor. She peered down at her feet and was surprised to find a DC-15A Blaster Rifle, the weapon carried by the vast majority of clone troopers during the Clone Wars. She picked the weapon up, her hands running along the mildewed, grimy surface. Nuri's eyes alit with hope as the Twi'lek aimed the weapon at the counter and depressed the trigger, expecting brilliant laserfire to erupt from its barrel. But nothing of the sort happened; the weapon did not respond at all. Frustrated, Tama hit the release and checked the charge pack, finding its power drained long ago. She then angrily snapped the weapon open, to find that it contained no tibanna gas cartridge. Not even bothering to close it, Tama tossed the heavy weapon aside and strode to the counter, peering over the edge to see what was on the other side, where the server would have stood.

Tama gave a gasp at what she saw. Lying on the mud-flecked, scum-ridden ground was the body of the Nautolan boy, a trio of fatal wounds in his sternum leaking his lifeblood as the last of his multiple hearts beat its final moments. The boy's mouth hung open, his dark glassy eyes staring into the oblivion of death. Sitting beside him, hungrily rummaging through a ration pack, completely oblivious to the body or the girls staring at him, was the Elomin boy. Both of his hands were busy shoving as many of the nutrient bars within the pack into his mouth. Beside him lay a vibroknife, the blade still greasy with the Nautolan boy's blood.

Nuri came to her side, then gasped in horror. "Memmifratus, what have you _done_?!"

The Elomin boy looked up at her, chewing openly and loudly. His dull, starving eyes barely seemed to register their presence, though he showed that he had heard by glancing at the Nautolan boy's corpse with little more than nonchalance. He resumed shoving a nutrient bar in his mouth, but Nuri, anger rolling off of her in waves, reached over the counter and snatched the ration pack from him.

That got an immediate, violent response from him. Memmifratus leapt to his feet, scooping the vibroknife in his grimy fist, his palm wet with blood and sticky with crumbs of the nutrient bar. "Give that back, Horns, or I'll gut you too!" he shrieked, his voice twisted with borderline insanity.

Nuri gestured at the horns adorning his own head, clutching what was left of the ration pack to her chest. "Seriously? Look who's talking!"

"Enough!" Tama shouted, not meaning to raise her voice so high. She put out a palm facing both of them in calming gestures; if she did not intervene presently, this would result in another stabbing. Her gaze, dark with fury, whirled on Memmifratus. "You! What happened here?"

The Elomin glared at the two of them with a barely-sane gleam of desperation in his gaze, as if he were seriously considering stabbing both of the girls with his knife and feasting on their flesh. He glanced down at the Nautolan again, and the expression on his face held not a shred of remorse or pity. "We found...we found the ration pack and the knife just sitting here...like it had been placed purposefully. He—he wanted them both to himself, an' we fought over...the rations. But I jus' wanted it more than he did..."

Nuri looked down at the torn ration pack with disgust, an expression that only deepened when she turned her glare on Memmifratus. "You Hutt-licking, cowardly son of a Sith harlot. Did it ever occur to you that these rations and this knife were probably put here deliberately? Did it ever occur to you that _this_ ," and here she gestured to the Nautolan's corpse, "is exactly what our sadistic kidnapper wanted you to do?"

"Did it ever occur to you that I don't care?!" Memmifratus screamed, his voice shrill with mania and emotion.

Tama gestured at both of them, waving her hands in placating motions. "Hey! Keep it down; there are worse things than knives out there." She looked over her shoulder, through the stained and streaked transparisteel to the muddy street beyond. She could see no movement out there, though the distant cry of some sort of beast they had yet to encounter echoed amongst the ruined buildings. She looked back to the rations held within the Zabrak's lacerated palms, then pointed at them with a jabbing finger. "Look. There's still plenty left here for all three of us if we share-"

Memmifratus waved the blade in front of him angrily, causing both girls to leap back in fright. "No! It's mine! Sharing is what got us into this mess in the first place! _You're_ what got us all landed in this hellhole, braintails! I will not let myself starve to death just so you can feel good 'bout how you remained defiant to the end...give me back that ration pack, _now_ , or I'll gut you both just like I did Oric!" His thumb flicked along the hilt of the weapon, and the vibration cell housed within the hilt set the blade whirring, becoming a deadly blur that could turn a simple slash into a gaping, mortal wound.

Tama reached out for the Force, trying to draw it to her, attempting to call upon the telekinetic powers that came to her with so much difficulty. Memmifratus was already clambering over the counter, his vibroknife brandished and humming, the low drone of its power cell sending vibrations through the air that could be felt through her teeth. Nuri gripped the remains of the ration pack in one hand, her intent to use it as a weapon against the deranged and starved Elomin.

Tama opened her mouth to speak, trying one final time to talk him down, to save him from the brink of disaster he now strode, but she was interrupted by a noise from outside. It was the high-pitched squeal of metal, as something that had long since rusted was ground along tracks that had not been used in over a decade or more. All three children turned to look through the windows behind them, their attention drawn to the repair shop by which Tama and Nuri had hid from the acklay. The garage that once allowed access to a variety of landspeeders had been closed before, but the door gaped wide, revealing an open, yawning maw of darkness, a cloud of spores roiling out of its interior. And with the spores came two shapes, large and bulky, but moving with a feline liquidity that belied their size. They were a little over a meter in height, though they were almost two in length, loping forward on two pairs of powerful limbs that ended in massive, sharpened claws. In the dim light, Tama could barely distinguish that they were dark green in color, with ochre discolorations around their paws and maws. A long, thick tail balanced the weight of their gigantic, squat heads, with flat faces ringed by a pair of horns and tusks, mouths full of dripping, interlocked fangs, and a pair of beady eyes that gleamed in the darkness. The pair of creatures let out deep growling snorts that reverberated through their chests and throats, their heads swiveling on powerful necks while they paced about, looking for prey. As the trio stared through the large array of windows at the front of the diner, the beasts inevitably swiveled their heads toward them, and Tama could feel their regard, like sharp, pinpricks slowly scratching over the skin of her _lekku_.

"Boma!" Nuri hissed as the beasts let out a crooning call and leapt toward the diner, their claws finding easy purchase in the deep mud. Tama did not even ask what that word meant, assuming that was the name of the creatures now intent on killing them. She instead grabbed ahold of both the Zabrak and the Elomin and the trio collapsed behind the counter. Tama landed squarely on the already-cold corpse of Oric, her eyes coming into contact with his dead gaze for a short, chilling moment.

Memmifratus still seemed like he was intent on stabbing the two girls, but the sight of the bomas had obviously shaken him from his murderous resolve, for he offered no resistance when the Twi'lek seized the blade from his fist. She ignored the blood and grime covering the hilt, then flicked off the vibration cell, unsure if the bomas could sense the subsonic vibrations the weapon produced. The Elomin reached to get it back, but Nuri hit him hard in the chin, which knocked him to the floor, whereupon she held him down with one hand. She glared at Memmifratus for a moment, then met the Twi'lek's gaze with fearful eyes. "We really are on Dxun..." she whimpered.

Tama looked about, still not ready to succumb to fear. The back wall, behind the bar, was adorned with the remains of shelves and an automixer, as well as an opening through which a chef would have been able to hand plates and trays of food through for waiters to serve to hungry customers. Her regard slid to the side, and found what she was looking for less than a meter from the opening, a doorway that led into the kitchen taking up the majority of the diner's backroom. The doorway may have once held a swinging door, but that barrier was long gone, and was nowhere in sight amongst the other rubble. She stabbed her fingers at the doorway, and without further encouragement, the trio scurried through the portal, emerging in a sizable kitchen lined with stoves and ovens in metal that must have gleamed at one point, but were streaked with mold and a fine dusting of spores. The room's floorspace was divided by three countertops with integrated sinks, preparation areas, and food synthesizers, their sides containing drawers, storage cabinets, and shelving to hold more types of pans, pots, containers, and utensils than Tama could name. Many of these utensils had been strewn across the slick, tiled floor, which made their footing treacherous and decidedly less than stealthy as they crept into the room. Tama led the impromptu procession to the back of the room, each one of them taking cover on the far end of each of the three counters. Tama stilled her labored breathing, clutching the vibroknife to her chest, then looked about desperately for another exit from the kitchen.

She felt dismay enter her chest, its cold grip on her heart. There were no other ways out of this kitchen than through the doorway they had entered, back toward the approaching bomas. She had led them into another cage, to await their slaughter at the teeth and claws of the creatures sent to hunt them.

Memmifratus leaned over from his hiding place, stretching out with his hand. "We're trapped in here! Give me back the knife; you obviously don't know what you're doing."

"She ain't giving you _poodoo_ ," Nuri interjected from the other side of the Twi'lek. "You killed Oric; you can't be trusted with it at all."

Tama made a slashing motion with the blade. "Shut up, both of you." Both of them looked as if they were about to argue loudly against her words, but they were interrupted by the sound of lengthy, growling snuffling, from the direction of the door they had used to enter. All three pressed themselves against the metal endcaps of the counters, trying to make themselves small and unnoticeable. Tama could feel the bomas in the Force, their raw, primal hunger and animalistic desire for flesh still warm with blood. She could hear the sounds of their claws clicking against the tiled floor, the immense gusts of air that were drawn in and out through their mouths. She could almost feel their rough, scaled hides sliding against her flesh, taste their fetid, rotting breath in the back of her throat. They moved together, bonded by a base need for companionship and belonging, hunting as a single unit. They paused in the doorway, growling low in their throats, sending rumbling vibrations that sounded like thunder through her ears and along the sensitive membranes of her _lekku_. There was a clicking of claws, and they began to move along the outside of the kitchen, sidling along the same counter that Memmifratus was using for cover.

Tama gained the Elomin's attention with a wave of her hand. He gave her a fierce glare, to which she answered with a motion indicating that he should move along the opposite side of the counter, for the bomas would soon round the corner and be right atop him. Fortunately, the Elomin understood, and began to slide along the side of the counter, moving in the opposite direction and on a parallel course to the bomas' stalking. Tama slid along her corner, putting the side of the counter between her and the endcap of Memmifratus' that the bomas would round, while Nuri needed no encouragement to do the same for the counter she used.

Tama dared to peer back around the corner just as one of the bomas rounded the Elomin's counter, still snuffling, yellow beads of saliva slipping from their weighty jaws. Their tusks and horns glinted in the dim light, and the eyes beneath their heavy brows showed a ravenous gleam. The other boma's abominable face appeared beside its compatriot, and the two began snuffling again, trying to pick up the scent of their quarry. They began to stride toward the Twi'lek's corner, completely ignoring the narrow passage between her counter and Memmifratus', where the Elomin hid in the shadows. Tama shifted her grip on the hilt of her vibroknife, ready to bring it to bear, but seriously doubting that such a puny weapon would even make a scratch in the bomas' thick hides.

And then the bomas' heads swung to the right, as the sound of a pan being kicked out of the way echoed through the kitchen. Memmifratus was making a break for the doorway, leaving Tama and Nuri to their fates. Tama stood, unsure why she did so even as she completed the motion, wanting to scream at the Elomin for abandoning them, wanting to warn him of the predators closing on his heels, wanting to call the bomas' attention to herself to avoid Memmifratus' death. And yet she did none of these things, for she was already too late even as she stood. The lead boma had already pounced upon the Elomin boy, bearing his fleeing form down to the mud and mold-stained floor, the breath rushing out of his lungs as its forelegs crashed down upon his spine. Memmifratus had the presence of mind left to utter a breathless, squeaking cry of pain, fear, and denial before the boma's maw of razors snapped into the back of his neck and cranium. That single cry pealed off into a wail which became tortured, incessant shrieking as the boma buried its fangs into the back of his neck and skull, bashing his face against the floor over and again before snapping its own head back, a large slab of musculature and vertebrae clenched in its jaws. Tama could feel her stomach rebelling at the sickeningly brutal scene before her, but there was nothing for her to disgorge. And she had greater problems to consider, for the second boma had not been so eager to bear down upon the fleeing Elomin, instead lagging behind.

And now it was staring with almost accusatory gleam in its small, dark eyes, as if it felt betrayed by the fact that Tama had originally hid herself from it. With a crooning hoot that echoed through the kitchen, the second boma turned and skittered around the counter, its focus upon the Twi'lek, intent on devouring its own meal.

Nuri removed herself from cover with a container of eating utensils, which she hurled as a missile at the charging boma. The box bounced off the boma's naturally-armored head, appearing to do nothing to it besides creating a mild irritant. Tama was backpedaling down the corridor of walking space between her counter and the one Nuri had been using as cover, fumbling with the switch on the vibroknife. The blade finally hummed to life, the hilt quivering in her hands even as the boma rounded the counter and launched itself into a mighty leap. The air left Tama's lungs as its front paws impacted her chest; if she had been better prepared for the leap and in peak physical condition, she may have been able to resist the force of the blow, or even tuck into a somersault to evade the predator. But instead the creature knocked her flat on her back, and she slid across the tile as the boma's gaping jaws reached for her throat. Gasping and practically charged with energy at the thought that she might not survive the next few seconds, her free hand came up under the boma's throat, forestalling its fangs for an extra half-second. This gave her just enough time for her to kick her legs under the monster's belly, then her weapon hand came from the side and connected with the thick, fleshy scales of the boma's neck. She grimaced as hot blood and strips of torn flesh, muscle, and gore showered her like greasy rain, the poor stabs and slashes of her vibroknife compacting the vicious vibrations of the blade. The boma gave a wet gasping sound as a large section of its throat was torn asunder, and with a trilling wail of anguish, the boma lost all strength in its limbs and powerful spine and simply collapsed. Tama gasped again under the weight of the corpse now lying upon her; she had no strength left to fight, much less lift the corpse that ensnared her.

But then Nuri was there, her hands tucking themselves under the Twi'lek's armpits and dragging her in short fits and jerks from beneath the boma's bulk. Nuri gasped and heaved, then helped Tama back to her feet. She opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was an unintelligible cry of surprise and fear. Tama, her chest aching and heaving for air, turned to see the first boma that had just finished slaughtering Memmifratus had rounded the endcap of the counter beside them, closest to the door, its gore-slicked jaws snapping as it large tongue slathered back and forth across its fangs. The boma gave a low, barking growl, then sprang forward, rushing to end the two girls as easily and violently as it had the Elomin.

Tama held the vibroknife in her quivering fingers, realizing that she had no strength left to carve up the second boma as she had the first; she could barely stand upright. Nuri began to dive for a heavy utensil, a blade or pan or something properly weighty enough to wield as a weapon. The boma was already midair, its claws leading, the blood flying from its parted jaws. Tama, with no time to think or consider her options, and no way to fight off the creature leaping for her face, did the only thing she could think of. She called upon the Force, letting it surround her, penetrate her, fill her very physical and spiritual essence in a massive overloading of her senses. She thrust her free hand forward, the Force erupting around her, shivering through the atmosphere of the kitchen and coming to bear upon the boma. Her mouth seemingly opened of its own accord as her senses reached out to the predators' own, and a single word issued from her lips. "Stop!"

The boma dropped to the floor, landing within centimeters of the Twi'lek's outstretched hand, as if the gravitational pull of the planet in that particular, localized area had gained tenfold. The boma growled and dropped to its haunches, its cruel, beady eyes glaring up at the Twi'lek. But it did not move, could not move. For Tama had left her body behind and merged her consciousness with the primal urges and hunger of the creature before her. She could see a Twi'lek standing before her with a palm facing forward, barely standing upright, obviously exhausted and easy prey. She could see another girl beside her, another fleshy, meat thing to be devoured, though the horns atop her head did not look appetizing. Tama had to try hard to remember who she was, remember that she was looking at a friend, not a potential meal. Or was the creature the one looking at Nuri? Where did she end and the boma begin?

Tama struggled through the fog of base emotion, primal needs, and growing hunger, the sweet, salty taste of blood in her mouth only making her heart pound louder and her stomach clench in anticipation of greater amounts of food. Tama waded through the primitive but powerful workings of the predator's brain, remembering who she was, finding herself in the quagmire of instinct before rising above it. The boma continued to remain still, straining against her commands but not having the will to do so. It could not begin to comprehend why it was unable to move, why it simply could not reach out with a paw bristling with claws and eviscerate the worm-headed thing before it. Tama had will, thought, and the Force on her side, and with it came the strength to command the boma's attention and redirect it.

The boma's small, dark eyes rolled in their sockets, refocusing on the corpse of the boma lying limp behind Tama. The Twi'lek let the Force surge within her, could feel her heart beating in rhythm with the boma's as saliva gathered in her parched mouth. Slowly, as if struggling through deep mud or snow, she stepped to the side, letting the boma lumber past her. No longer interested in eating her or Nuri, the predator sniffed deeply at the freshly-spilled blood of its former compatriot, then lowered its powerful jaws and began shaking its head back and forth, using the sharp, jerking motions to tear off sizable strips of scaly flesh and gummy gore. Tama began to slowly withdraw her mind and feelings from the boma's, even as the taste of blood and boma flesh filled her mouth. She knew that she had come back to herself when she found that flavor nauseating rather than intoxicating, and she willed herself not to dry heave again. Nuri was suddenly at her side, a heavy skillet in one hand, her other gripping the Twi'lek's upper arm, pulling her down the corridor and back toward the doorway. Tama kept her gaze focused on the boma as it ravenously dug into the corpse of its pack mate, backpedaling, unable to stand fully without the Zabrak's support. Her head turned to the side as they rounded the endcap of the middle counter, and she felt queasy all over again as she saw the mangled corpse of Memmifratus, lying in a pool of thick, coagulating blood.

The pair hobbled through the doorway and back into the front portion of the diner, where Nuri steered the exhausted, listing Twi'lek toward the entrance of the building, whispering words of encouragement Tama did not hear. The two of them shambled from the diner, plodding through the mud and into the street. The sounds of the jungle outside competed with the roars, shrieks, and chortles of predators hunting throughout the ruined city. But fortunately, none of those predators were anywhere near them. Tama was dimly aware of the deepening darkness of the night, the inordinate glows that suffused several species of fungi. She shuffled forward, and suddenly found herself in a deeper darkness, but the humid air was more still here, more musky. Somehow, they had moved to an interior space. She felt Nuri's hands on her shoulder and waist as she helped the Twi'lek to a seated position, and she felt a hard, cold, damp surface supporting her back.

Tama blinked rapidly, trying to regain her full faculties. She felt a strange, numbing sensation in her hand, and looked down to see that her vibroknife was still active. Absentmindedly, she flicked the switch to cease the motion of the vibration cell, and the blood-caked blade went motionless and silent. She looked up to see Nuri squatting before her, her grimy hands moving about the Twi'lek's face. Tama could see her lips moving, and strained to listen. "...you alright?! Tama, come on, come back to me!"

Tama tried to swallow, but found her throat too parched. Her dry tongue worked about her mouth, generating enough saliva to complete an actual gulp. "I'm...still here. And alive, it seems."

Nuri heaved a sigh of relief, dropping back onto her posterior, but still leaning close to her friend. Her hand came up to cup Tama's cheek, then felt her forehead. "Are you okay? You were so out of it there, I thought I'd lost you."

Tama gave a barely perceptible nod as her eyes roamed over their new surroundings. They were in a dark space, a small room that gave her the feeling of being underground. On one end was a thin set of stairs leading up to a trapdoor that was closed tightly; she did not remember coming down those stairs, but they appeared to be the only way in or out of this room. Stacked all around them were crates and cargo cylinders, most of which stood open and empty; those that remained sealed had locks or keypads in corroded and deteriorating conditions. She was leaning against one of the larger crates, made of cool metal. The air was close, musty, and thick with moisture in this space, but at least it was cool on her skin. She returned her regard to the Zabrak, who was busily digging in the remains of her tattered tunic. She withdrew the half-consumed ration pack she had taken from Memmifratus, then opened it, pulling out a small pouch in which was sealed filtered water. She popped the nib on one corner of the pouch, then held it up to Tama's face. "Here. Drink."

Tama wanted to argue, but she realized how unbelievably thirsty she was, and greedily drank from the pouch. She consumed half the pouch in only a few short gulps, then forcibly ripped it from between her teeth and gave it back to the Zabrak before she could no longer help herself and imbibed all the water. Nuri looked like she was about to argue, but her unsatisfied thirst overcame social niceties, and she happily drank the rest of the pouch dry. The Zabrak girl tossed the empty plastic to the side, then dumped what remained of the ration bars into her lap. Most of them had been crushed and broken by Memmifratus' greed, but there was still enough left for them to have a few bites, which both Tama and Nuri savored for several minutes, letting the consumption of food demand a comfortable silence between the two in which they could ponder the events of the day so far.

"I think...we're actually on Dxun," Nuri spoke into the lengthy silence. "The bomas confirmed it; they're native to Dxun, and only found there, as far as I know. That would explain the other monsters we've run into or heard from a distance, 'cause Dxun's just one big jungle full of more and more terrible creatures the farther you get into it." She mused on her own words for a moment, chewing her lower lip, drawing blood from its chapped skin. "Though I've never heard of any large-scale cities on Dxun; I don't think there's anyone actually crazy enough to build there. Besides Dark Jedi and Mandalorians."

Tama let her head fall back against the crate, eliciting a small, echoing clang. "Maybe the predators were imported. Whoever it is that holds us here seems to have a lot of resources; who's to say he didn't build this city and the droids and import these creatures here? Besides, I've been seeing a lot of Clone Wars-era tech and architecture in these ruins, and I don't remember any reports of battles on Dxun during the Clone Wars."

Nuri considered this for a moment. "True. I don't remember any such battles either..."

Tama waved a dismissive hand. "It doesn't really matter where we are, though. We were all brought here from various corners of the galaxy, which means there's a way to get off this world. We need to find the others and we need to find a way offplanet and back home."

Nuri gave her a skeptical glance. "I wonder if we should focus on finding the others at all...I mean, what if they're all going barvey like Memmifratus? What if they'll stab us in the back for just a few ration bars? What if they decide they want to eat us to sate their hunger?"

Tama shook her head in denial. "What Memmifratus did was unforgivable, but remember who the enemy here is. How do we know he wasn't the nicest Elomin boy in the galaxy before he was thrown in this hellhole...like the rest of us? Starvation and torture do terrible things to people; if we can save the others from such a fate, we should at least try."

Nuri looked down at the gimy floor, thinking over the Twi'lek's words. From the expression on her face, Nuri did not seem to fully agree with Tama's plans and assertions, but she did not openly argue anymore. Perhaps she was too tired to do so. Or perhaps she simply felt it was not worth it. They sat together in silence for another lengthy period of time, staring off into the darkness, letting their bodies recuperate and digest what little sustenance they had taken in. Tama felt her stomach unwinding itself slightly from the hard knot it had worked itself into, eliciting a gurgling sound as it protested at the miniscule amount of food she had granted it. Nuri glanced over at the Twi'lek, then scooted across the slick floor to sit beside her, taking comfort in the proximity of another living person who did not want to kill her. Tama took her hand and rubbed her thumb along the Zabrak's sharp knuckles in what she hoped was a soothing gesture. "We should get moving soon. If our kidnapper can talk to us telepathically whenever he wants, he can probably figure out where we are at any given time. If his monsters don't find us, he'll probably send his droids to flush us out."

Nuri lifted her head, staring intently at Tama's profile. "Tama...what happened back there?"

Tama shifted uncomfortably. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. That boma had us both dead, but then you told it to stop, and it was like it hit a wall or something. And then it just ignored us and ate the other boma. I've seen people who are good with animals, but no one's that good unless they raise the animal themselves, and bomas aren't exactly the domesticated type of creature." She leaned closer, scrutinizing the Twi'lek who refused to look her in the eye. "What I saw back there was impossible. So what happened? How did you do that?"

Tama chewed her lip for a moment, trying to think of a way she could explain her control over the boma in a way that would not give away her connection to the Force. Tama herself did not really understand what had happened, or how she had formed such a deep and intimate connection with the creature. She had merely reached for the Force, bidding it help her, and her trust had been rewarded. But she had done so in the full view of Nuri, someone not sensitive to the Force, someone who could not understand its subtleties and endless power. But then, she was not sure anyone, Force-sensitive or not, could truly understand the true scope and magnitude of the Great Mystery. She could almost hear Foyi's disapproving voice, warning her not to reveal her true nature, to avoid the use of the Force when there were others who might see it, as the Empire's spies were everywhere. But this situation she had found herself in was not ordinary by any sense of the word. And if she could not trust Nuri, how would she ever get out of this place alive? Tama cleared her throat with a raspy cough. "Have you heard of the Force?"

Nuri's expression became a grimace as she recalled unseen memories. "I've heard it was part of the old Jedi religion. Some sort of mystical energy field binding the galaxy together with a will all it own. My dad always said it was a myth." Her eyes opened a bit wider as a thought occurred to her. "It's not a myth, is it?"

Tama nodded her agreement. "No, it's as real as you or me. Probably more real, though I don't claim to understand all the metaphysical aspects of it."

Nuri looked both shocked and strangely relieved, as if she had just discovered a truth that explained everything about her life up to that moment. " _That_ was the Force. Wasn't it?"

Tama nodded again. "I can feel the Force, at all times, even if I try not to. I can feel the energy of myself, you, this planet, this room, all entwined and interconnected in a great field of power and consciousness, flowing from and into one another. Everything in the galaxy is connected by it, and it flows through everyone and everything, whether they feel it or not. Sometimes, if I am still and quiet, if I concentrate, if I trust, I can tap into that energy and do things most people would consider impossible."

"Like convincing a wild animal not to eat us."

Tama let a small grin crease her lips. "Yeah, though I didn't realize I could do that until I did it. I just didn't want to die, and I didn't want you to die either, so I called upon the Force for help. I...I was in the boma's _mind_ ; I could feel how badly it wanted to eat us, how hungry it was. I guess I convinced it that the other boma's corpse would be a much tastier meal."

Nuri considered her words for a long moment, a look mixing contemplation, trepidation, and wonder on her face. She turned back to the Twi'lek with a gleam of hope in her eyes. "Can you...use the Force to get us out of here?"

"That's my hope. That it will help us get out of here in one piece. Somehow. Though I'm afraid that even when I'm in the best of health, I'm still only in training in how to use the Force. It might not be as much help to us as we might hope. We'll probably still have to use more conventional means to get out of this deathtrap."

Nuri's expression darkened as a thought suddenly occurred to her. "Is the... _murglak_ who kidnapped us...can he use the Force too?"

Tama let out a shaking sigh. "I honestly don't know yet. It would explain how he can be in our minds whenever he wants. Though he could just be a powerful telepath; or both. Either way, I wish I could block him out, but he's more powerful than I am. If he is Force-sensitive. If 'he' is even a he."

Nuri took her hand again, squeezing tightly as if her life depended on it. "Then try to get some rest, Tama. I'll keep watch, make sure nothing gets too close. If your Force is going to help us, you need to regain some of your strength so that it can. Our survival may depend upon it."

Tama thought about arguing, but the thought of sleep, even a short, fitful period of it, was too seductive a notion to pass up. She nodded her thanks to the Zabrak, gave her hand a grateful clench, then laid her head back. Sleep came easily and quickly for her, and she sank into blissful unconsciousness.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Foyi and Rayf said little as the repulsortruck trundled along. Foyi continued to glare at any of the mercenaries that met her eyes, some of them with contempt in their regard, others with lust. Rayf contented himself by licking at the blood that dribbled from his torn lip, while the bruise on his jaw grew a deeper shade of purple by the minute. The pair of Ganks assigned to watch over the expedition's bait sat quietly, though by the way they moved, Foyi assumed they were carrying on some sort of conversation through the interior helmet comm channel. She ignored them and instead let herself sink into the Force, attempting to locate where Ak-vir was in this procession of thieves and murderers. Feelings of fear, avarice, excitement, and distrust were like palpable, physical objects hovering unseen within the Trast speeder truck. There were over a half dozen mercenaries housed within the metal belly of the vehicle, talking amongst themselves, reviewing equipment, checking weapons, and fantasizing about what they would do with their portion of unfathomable treasure. Some were even harboring dark thoughts of seeing how many of their compatriots they could kill in ways that would appear as accidents or unfortunate hazards of the job, so that their share of Fische's Legacy would be greater as a result. The Twi'lek Zeison Sha pushed past the churning sea of insidious surface thoughts, then expanded her awareness beyond the truck, to find another cluster of presences bobbing along ahead. It was in the midst of these presences that she found one familiar, the slimy, greasy personality of Ak-vir Vri, his mind occupied with sensations of anger and disbelief. He seemed to be in the midst of an argument with another presence she mildly recognized. She believed she could safely assume that this individual was Sho Sura.

Rayf glanced over at her to see a grin slowly spreading over her lips. "What's so amusing?" he asked under his breath.

Foyi suppressed the grin, keeping an eye on the preoccupied Ganks while whispering out of the corner of her mouth. "I don't think Vri and Sura are too happy with each other."

Rayf concentrated for a moment, and she could feel his existence within ebbing waves of the Force expand as he reached out across distance that was inconsequential to the limitless reach and power of the whole. He nodded, a slight smile twisting his battered lips into a smirk. "That could be used to our advantage. One thing I've found common about scum like these all over the galaxy; they're usually as willing to kill their allies as they are their enemies."

"We don't want Ak-vir dead," Foyi hissed irritably. "At least, not until he tells us what he did with Tama."

"Just saying, it's obvious through your ingenious antics with the auto-turrets, they don't trust each other, but I'm warning you, if we take advantage of this, it might come down to blaster bolts whether we like it or not."

"As long as it gets us closer to finding Tama, I don't really care what happens."

"And gets us not eaten by monsters that may or may not be imaginary," Rayf added.

"I wouldn't be too concerned about that, Moors."

"Are you kidding? 'Eaten by, well, _anything_ ' is right at the top of my list of 'things I should avoid forever'."

The rumbling of the speeder truck's repulsors began to fade in volume, and Foyi could feel the velocity at which they were hurling lessen as the vehicle slowed. They were nearing their destination, these mysterious Mines she knew nothing about, save for the half-glimpsed holomap she had seen in Sura's warehouse. She tried to recall the details of the map to her mind, but she had not regarded it as particularly important at the time, and so she could not dredge up any details regarding the layout of the subterranean maze they were about to be led into. Besides, Sura had mentioned that map was compiled from a multitude of possibly unreliable sources from previously explored territory, and the expedition would want to navigate out of that initial section as quickly as possible, moving into the deeper tunnels that had yet to be touched by modern sentient beings. She briefly wondered if there truly was a treasure trove of immeasurable wealth hidden somewhere in the tunnels they were about to enter, but forced her thoughts away from such notions. All that mattered to her was somehow getting Ak-vir to divulge what he knew regarding Tama's fate, and whoever this "Shepherd" character was that he had referenced.

The repulsortruck ground to a halt with a protesting moan of settling, cooling metal, and those inside began to stand. Rayf and Foyi remained seated until the Ganks stood and gripped their upper arms, hauling them roughly to their feet. The mercenaries in the vehicle had busied themselves with the crates and cargo containers in the center aisle, withdrawing bulky suits of pressurized fabrics and plated armor. The cargo containers housed a large number of vac suits and secondary oxygen tanks, pressure gauges, and patches for repairing suit ruptures. The thugs began donning the bulky suits over their normal clothes and sparse armor, though they removed their weapons and utility belts, which they then strapped over the bulging waists of their suits. The Ganks' grips grew tighter and more painful especially at this point, but neither Rayf nor Foyi made any concerted move to acquire any of these weapons.

When most of the mercenaries were sealed within their vac suits and were occupied slaving their comm signals, the Ganks undid the binders around the two prisoners' wrists, then filled their waiting arms with heavy vac suits. Foyi had never worn such equipment before, and had great difficulty putting it on properly, until Rayf offered his assistance. She felt a moment of panic as the fasteners on the helmet sealed with those around her neck. Cool, pleasantly-filtered oxygen began to fill the interior of that helmet, and she took a deep, calming breath, finding her inner center of peace. She twitched her _lekku_ uncomfortably, for the helmet chafed against the appendages; the vac suit had most likely been designed for a human, or a near-human species without prominent head tails. She reached up with her clumsy, thick gloves to adjust the helmet, but now that it was sealed, it would not budge. She gave a sigh of frustration and sought that inner sense of calm again; she would just have to get used to the feeling of the helmet rubbing against her _lekku_ , no matter how much they itched because of it.

She turned to check Rayf, who was just fastening the helmet of his suit about his neck with a familiar, practiced motion. He engaged the hermetic seals, then gave her a lopsided grin and triggered the helmet comm. "How ya doing in there, Foyi?"

Foyi fumbled with the comm a moment, then answered sourly, "Fine. I don't think this suit was designed with Twi'leks in mind, though." She absentmindedly brought her cumbersome gloves up to her helmet, readjusting it as best she could, but it simply did not fit well.

Rayf tapped one of the Ganks on the shoulder, who was busy helping his compatriot into his vac suit, which he had insisted on donning over his tight-fitting armor. The Gank's featureless, helmeted head turned to regard Rayf, who asked pleasantly, "Hey, you got any helmets made for Twi'leks? It's for my friend."

The Gank merely stared at him, his presence going cold in the Force. He brought his blaster rifle up to bear, and Rayf stepped back, raising his hands. "Hey, just asking. No harm, no foul, right?"

The Ganks finished crawling into their envirosuits at about the same time everyone else on the truck had geared themselves up for the expedition ahead, many of them carrying a variety of blasters or sensors equipment. Supplies, particularly spare oxygen tanks, were loaded on a hoversled that up to this point had sat toward the front of the truck's cargo hold, and was now being directed to the door, which had yet to be opened. Foyi expected their captors to fasten the binders on their wrists again, but their Gank guards contented themselves with simply aiming their blasters and motioning them toward the door. Foyi took her first steps in the suit, and immediately understood why they had not bothered to bind their hands. She could barely move in the vac suit, as its weight and bulk reduced her movements to the speed of "slow" and her flexibility to "negligible". Escape would be a much more difficult proposition than she had at first assumed.

The door opened, and there was a rush of air as the atmosphere kept within the repulsortruck rushed out to the lower pressure area of the tunnel beyond. Foyi took a glance at the rudimentary HUD lining the interior of her helmet, Aurebesh lettering scrolling slowly by in her peripheral vision. The suit's readouts told her that the atmosphere in the tunnel outside was actually breathable, but the temperature was forbiddingly low. She did not know exactly where they were in the comet, or in relation to the rest of Point Nadir, but she assumed they were far enough away from the artificial gravity generators and atmospheric scrubbers of the shadowport proper that the expedition wished to take every precaution. After all, how could they spend their ill-gotten gains if they died from exposure to vacuum?

Foyi and Rayf were shoved out through the door, the tips of blaster barrels jabbed into their spines painfully, even through the multiple layers of the suits. They found themselves in a tunnel dark and cold, lit only by the lights attached to the helmets of many of the vac suits or the portable glowrods and flashlights carried by other mercs. The tunnel around the repulsortrucks was wide and roughly cut, showing scars from plasma mining, with rough, barely level ground. The speeder trucks had stopped in the middle of the tunnel, which curved out of sight both before and behind them, but the caravan had stopped because the tunnel ahead had narrowed to the point that the large vehicles could go no further without wedging themselves in the narrow confines. The menagerie of light sources playing across the jagged contours of the walls cast eerie, dancing shadows that pranced and contorted like the slathering, ravenous spirits of the dead. Foyi could feel the weight of the past and the comet itself, bearing down on her head with all the force of an immense, interstellar object. She closed her eyes for a moment, sinking into the Force, letting its cool, crisp waters wash over her, providing her comfort.

She jolted as the Ganks shoved her forward, further down the tunnel, Rayf stumbling beside her. She momentarily slipped on a patch of ice slicked across the stone floor, then stepped past a rough stalagmite that was more likely the product of sentient carelessness rather than natural chemical processes. Foyi glanced up to see Ak-vir Vri standing near the nose of the lead repulsortruck, his already imposing physical form made more so by the vac suit he wore. Through the viewport on her helmet, she could see that he still wore that awful striped bandana, and for some reason, that angered her more than a little. Beside him stood a similarly-equipped figure, though considerably shorter. Sho Sura looked almost comical in his bulky vac suit, which had been customized to species of his diminutive stature, though the obtuse nature of the suit reminded her of a Wookiee plush toy she had owned when she was a child.

The Ganks placed firm grips on Rayf and Foyi's shoulders, keeping them still as Ak-vir and Sura looked them over. Ak-vir looked less than happy that they were here, while Sura merely looked bored. The Weequay saw the darkening bruise on Rayf's cheek and regarded them both with a sardonic grin. "And here we be havin' our bantha fodder!" Ak-vir chortled. His slimy voice crackled through the comlinks of all those present, and most of the mercenaries gathered cracked equally sadistic smiles. "What say ya, boys? Should we be lettin' them two lead us? Give us some nice warnings wit' their screams they find any o' them monsters that're down here."

A chorus of chuckles, snickers, and calls of "Yeah!" and "Aye!" met his proclamation, the mercs' desire for blood being riled by the slaver's words. Rayf cleared his throat, taking a small step toward Ak-vir. "As much as I love leading the troops," he said in a nonchalant, mirthful voice, "I was just going to ask you, Ak-vir, if you maybe wanted to take a turn this time, what with you having the most experience with these...gentlebeings and all."

The Weequay snorted. "Wha's this? Don't wanna be eaten by imaginary monsters, _sleemo_?"

Rayf nodded. "Yeah, see, I'd like to avoid that. I didn't really have that on my schedule for today. And let's face it, Captain, you're just going to kill us anyway, whether we provide a tasty morsel for some creature down here or target practice for Zietta's boys. You might as well open our helmets now; sucking void's as good a way to go as any."

"As tempting as an offer that is, yes," Sura interjected before Ak-vir could answer, "I'm thinking we'll keep you right where you are for now. Men, move them to the front with me and make sure they know where they're going."

The Ganks pushed the pair of prisoners forward, moving them ahead of the ragtag line that was forming along the side of the repulsortrucks. As Foyi stumbled past the Gossam, she triggered her comlink, her eyes meeting the yellow gaze of Sura. "I hope Vri's walking up front with us too."

Sura's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Why do you care about it?"

"I just didn't think a smart man like you would keep your enemy behind you when you're all so close to the treasure."

Sura grabbed her arm, halting her advance; the Gank directing her waited patiently as his employer lowered his voice and opened a private comm channel with her. "What is it you are saying, wormhead, yes? We are partners in this, always have been. Our trust is sound, yes, and you cannot convince me that Captain Vri would betray me."

Foyi shrugged, the movement awkward and exaggerated in her vac suit. "I'm sure. And of course, Ak-vir had nothing to do with how we knew where your secret warehouse was."

Sura let out a hiss of contempt, but she could feel the suspicion leaking off of him in growing eddies, not all of it directed at her. "Ak-vir would not reveal these things to you. You are but a mere yum-yum."

"But this yum-yum can be very persuasive. Turns out our dear Captain Vri can't handle too much pain before he starts spilling his secrets, along with more than a few of yours."

"And yet he did not tell you about the the female you were looking for, no? I find you hard to believe."

"Oh, he was going to, but Yuelo interrupted us," Foyi replied, keeping her voice calm, even as her mind was racing to keep one step ahead of the perceptive Gossam. "He can be rather persuasive too, and persuaded us to run before he had his boys put a few hundred blaster bolts in us."

Sura seriously considered that, mulling over her words. His helmeted head swung to look behind him, where the Weequay in question was conversing with the Zygerrian member of his crew. His attention was nowhere near his partner at the moment, and the words of suspicion that Foyi was sinking into the Gossam's ears. For she was drawing upon the Force, sending searching currents to the Gossam's consciousness, letting the Force alter Sura's perceptions of his partner. She found the suspicions the Gossam already harbored regarding Ak-vir, and she mentally tugged on those, worming them to the forefront of his mind so subtly, so naturally, he would be certain that the thoughts had occurred of their own accord. And even as her telepathic intrusions aroused his suspicions, she continued to exert influence over him in another way, making her words sound true, as if they were revelations that had not occurred to him before but explained a vast, unexplained aspect of his life. She was not looking at Rayf, but she could feel his approval like ripples at the periphery of her mind.

The Gossam glared at her, then turned and marched his small legs back to the Weequay. Ak-vir looked down at him to find a scowling, reptilian grimace through the faceplate of his vac suit. "Your prisoners bother me, yes. I'll keep everyone back here in line, make sure they don't drop the scanners, yes."

Ak-vir gave him a strange look, then answered with a shrug. He stepped past the Gossam, casting a suspicious glance over his shoulder, then drew to Foyi and Rayf's side, as well as the Ganks who drove them ever forward. Ak-vir made a hurried gesture at the Ganks, snapping, "Alright! Let's get this parade moving. Guests of honor first."

Both Rayf and Foyi stumbled forward as the barrels of blasters jabbed into their spines again, and so the expedition commenced. The tunnel ahead of them consisted of oblong contours and jagged protrusions, as if whoever or whatever had carved its way through the comet's crust had done so in the most expedient way possible, with no consideration for uniformity or structural integrity. The floor rose and fell at irregular intervals, occasionally split by thin ravines and fissures that made footing treacherous and unreliable. Foyi found it easier to move through the tunnel than she at first believed was capable in the inflexible vac suit, for the gravity here was far below standard, giving her a light, easy spring to her step. She hopped over one thin fissure so as not to catch her foot in it, and she found herself floating gradually to the floor of the tunnel again over the distance of a meter or more. The Gank behind her predictably slammed a hand down on her shoulder to keep her grounded, and to remind her not to try anything too adventurous with the low gravity environment and discourage escape. The lights on her helmet swept back and forth, revealing rough patches of rock and small alcoves where various minerals and ores had been extracted as the machines and laborers that carved the tunnel happened upon them. Occasionally, her light would disappear into deeper, dustier pockets of darkness, signifying tunnels both larger and smaller than the one they traversed branching off into further, unexplored areas of the comet. The Ganks provided the pair plenty of encouragement to continue moving forward, but Ak-vir, who walked only a few paces ahead of her, more than once directed them along a side passage, especially when the scanners used by the company picked up anomalies they found enticing. Sometimes, these side passages turned out to be dead-ends, at which point the line would turn about and snake back until they found the main passageway once more. Other times, these detours would curve back or forward, eventually rejoining with the original passage they had left. But sometimes these tributary tunnels would branch off into complex tunnel systems of their own, meandering through the deeper regions of the comet and into the darkness, the lights of their company reflecting off the dust their passage disturbed. Ak-vir, Sura, and their minions became encouraged when they found the remains of mining equipment and droids that had once been abandoned when they had sustained too much use or damage to continue being useful to the original owners and surveyors of the comet. Foyi even heard some of the thugs whispering assertions that they were walking in the steps of Salovan Fische himself, speaking the name of the long-dead pirate as if it were sacred.

Foyi tripped over a particularly thorny patch of rubble and broken ground, but Rayf's hand was there, steadying her and keeping her upright. She nodded her gratitude, then looked up to see Ak-vir had paused, his faceplate turned toward her. A wicked grin was splayed across his features, a grin at her expense. "Come now, little _schutta_. I don't want to get lonely up here, and I doubt your friend would be wantin' it either."

Foyi and Rayf slowly proceeded, the Weequay letting them get a few paces ahead of him. Rayf looked back at their captor as best he could with such limited peripheral vision provided by the helmet, though the white of his teeth could be seen in his jocular grin. "Wha's the matter, Ak-vir? Afraid of the dark? Need me to hold your hand? 'Cause I can, if I've really no choice."

Ak-vir glared at him, the anger and annoyance he felt in response to Rayf's very presence rolling off of him in palpable waves atop a stormy sea. "I find it befuddling that even when yer so clearly beaten an' within me power, ya still have the asteroids ta pick a fight. Ya know, one command, an' my men'll gun ya down like the womp rat ya are, scum."

"Oh, I ain't picking a fight," Rayf assured him flippantly. "I just know you aren't going to do anything. You're just a bag of hot tibanna gas; you spew a lot of threats, but you're really not all that dangerous."

Ak-vir's hand dropped to the DL-44 strapped to his waist, but he did not draw it. Foyi watched the exchange with interest, calling upon the Force to feel the charged emotions in the atmosphere between them. Rayf was correct, of course; Ak-vir definitely held murderous feelings toward the both of them, but for now, he did not feel fully compelled to shoot them dead. Instead, his surface thoughts revolved around the fantasies he envisioned for himself should Fische's Legacy be found, a grudge he still held against his Gossam partner for the fiasco with the auto-turrets, and colorful mental images of both Foyi and Rayf being torn about by shapeless monsters the he hoped lurked somewhere in the darkness ahead. She got the impression that he did not actually believe the volume of fables and legends of monsters that guarded the Mines of Point Nadir from the intrusions of explorers and treasure hunters, but his sadistic nature greatly enjoyed the possibility that they would be available to execute the pair of Force-sensitives who had plagued him recently.

"Quit antagonizing the poor man," Foyi said to Rayf in a sarcastic tone. "He's been through so much recently, he could probably use a break."

Ak-vir stepped closer to her, coming to her side and glaring blasterbolts through his faceplate. "No thanks being to you, jeedai scum."

"It's unfortunate for you that I'm _not_ a Jedi, Ak-vir," the Twi'lek answered with venom in her voice. "A Jedi would have treated you a lot better than I did...than I plan to once I'm out of here."

Ak-vir snorted. "Oh? And you're gonna escape how, little wormhead? You can't make one funny move without any o' mine or Sura's guards shooting ya both dead. Ya ain't getting out o' this alive, anyway ya look at it."

Rayf gave a knowing grin, as if he knew an advantageous secret unknown to the Weequay. "Maybe not by ourselves, no."

Ak-vir step faltered for a moment, his helmeted head facing the two prisoners. "And yer thinkin' yer gonna get help, is that it?"

"Possibly," Foyi answered for Rayf, playing off the deception the two of them were fabricating. Both of them were accessing the Force now, sending out subtle waves that converged on Ak-vir's mind, raising his suspicions and his hostility, while beginning to redirect those feelings away from the pair of prisoners.

Ak-vir, unaware he was being manipulated in such an invisible and indirect manner, leaned closer, his dark eyes narrowing. His voice dropped low, though the actual level of decibels in their comm channel did not change as it adjusted for his change in tone. "The auto-turrets...ya had somethin' to do wit' that, didn't ya. You an' Sura."

Foyi could not contain her alarm, suffusing the Force with it, but she received a soothing emanation from Rayf, assuring her that the conclusion that Ak-vir had jumped to was the result of a Force suggestion on the human's part. In context with the deception that Foyi had begun cultivating with Sura, stringing Ak-vir along with such an implanted mental suggestion did not make much sense. She was about to say something to deny their association with Sura, to steer Ak-vir along a different line of thought, until she realized the secret brilliance of Rayf's insertion into the plan, as well as the enormous gamble he was taking. Rayf was merely trying to turn Ak-vir's full hostility and skepticism upon his partner, just as Foyi had directed Sura's misgivings toward the Weequay, banking on the assumption that the pair of them were such violent, nefarious, and suspicious individuals by nature that they would not simply talk to one another and compare the differing claims of Foyi and Rayf. Her mind raced for a few seconds before she snagged on a way they could seize this opportunity and further deepen Ak-vir's suspicions. She nodded. "Sura's confidence in your abilities to find Fische's Legacy has waned of late. He came to us for help in finding it...it's why he didn't want you to kill us. It's why we're the supposed bait of creatures that don't exist."

Ak-vir had the presence of mind to continue walking, though his gait was slower as he tried to make sense of the supposed betrayal levered against him by his partner. Both Foyi and Rayf were deep within the turbulent seas of the Force, ripples becoming waves that battered the walls of the Weequay's consciousness. "Tha's...tha's what you was doin' up on those shelves...you was messin' with the controls of the auto-turrets!"

Rayf gave Foyi a glance, to which she shrugged. "Sure," he answered nonchalantly.

Ak-vir's hand struck out and caught hold of the front of Rayf's envirosuit. "Why? Why're ya workin' wit' Sura?! I thought you was lookin' fer that lil' _schutta_ I gave to Yuelo!"

Foyi had to suppress a grin as new information regarding Tama's whereabouts inevitably leaked out of Ak-vir's excited and turbulent state. Rayf patted the Weequay's gloved hand in a mocking gesture of comfort. "Sure, Ak-vir, that's what we _claimed_. But we already know all about your deal for child slaves with Yuelo, and frankly, we don't care what kinda sick interests you or that Hutt are into..." And as his sentence trailed off, both Foyi and Rayf, in tune and concert with each other's feelings, assaulted Ak-vir with overwhelming sensations of guilt and shame.

They knew success when Ak-vir's expression twisted into a grimace of anger and denial, feeling an irrational desire to justify himself to the prisoners. "No no no, ya both got it wrong, ya _murglaks_! I'm jus' the scurrier here; I get the younglings when Yuelo requests 'em, an' he only does that when that creep 'the Shepherd' puts in an order. Always girls o' fourteen standard years, an' boys o' twelve. Don't ask me why, I dunno." He snarled into the comm channel. "But that don't matter none! Why did ya attack me? Was it on Sura's orders?!"

Rayf held up his hands in mock surrender. "Looks like we're pure transparisteel to you, Vri; there's no use hiding any of it from you. Yeah, we were under Sura's orders to kill you, make you think that we were just an outside party interested only in the side gig you've got with Yuelo and the Shepherd. But actually, he knew he didn't need you anymore, so we were paid you get you out of the picture, considering you already know too much about the treasure and this expedition as it is. You see, we're the only essential proponents of this entire endeavor; you're just an accessory, a redundancy, now."

Ak-vir lessened his grip on Rayf, disbelief, paranoia, and bristling anger pouring off of him in waves that rippled across Foyi and Rayf's minds. "An' wha's makin' you two so damned important, eh?"

Foyi sidled up beside the Weequay, a vicious grin on her face. "Our Jedi magic, Ak-vir. We can find almost anything we'd ever want, just by using our magic."

Ak-vir's dark eyes blanched, meeting Foyi's intense gaze with a look of apprehension and wonder all mixed into his paranoid grimace. "Tha's...that's impossible..." he muttered into the helmet comm.

"You know what else is impossible, Vri?" came Rayf's response, as if on cue. "My friend here reaching into your chest cavity and causing spasms in your heart and lungs, and choking the life out of you...all without ever laying a finger on you. You remember that, dontcha?"

Ak-vir visibly swallowed, the memories of the rough treatment he had met in Foyi's hands arising in the surface of his mind. Foyi capitalized upon this by continuing Rayf's ridiculous assertions regarding their Force abilities, adding, "And that's only one of the powers I have, Ak-vir, and you haven't even seen any of his magic at work yet. He's better at the whole 'treasure-tracking' bit, and I help him where I can. Me...I'm just better at making young, healthy people have unexpected coronaries. Sura finds our abilities quite helpful to him and his organization, a lot more helpful than you've ever been, which is why you see us here, now, leading the expedition."

Ak-vir leaned close to her. "Can...can ya sense the treasure _now_?"

Rayf answered for her, affecting a supremely confident and bemused air. "Faintly. We're close now...though you might like to know that we're going the wrong way."

Ak-vir glanced into the darkness of the tunnel ahead of them, his helmet lights barely illuminating a fork in the tunnel several meters from their position. His intense gaze came back to glare at Rayf and Foyi in turn, and his voice dropped to a whisper. ""Wha's Sura payin' ya?"

"Our usual fee, plus an equal share of the treasure," Foyi answered. "Why, you offering us more?"

Ak-vir chewed his bottom lip for a moment, then glared at them again. "What say I ferget 'bout you tryin' ta kill me back there in the interests of me being the first ta know when ya find the treasure instead of Sura. Ya do that, you'll get yer usual fee, an equal share o' the treasure, plus Sura's share, which, being one o' the leaders o' this expedition is being alotta creds. He won't be needing it for much longer once ya find me Fische's booty."

Rayf and Foyi turned to each other, pretending to consider the offer, though both of them knew what the other would answer long before they gave a verbal reply. Foyi spoke for both of them, affecting her best conspiratorial smile. "Alright, Ak-vir. You've got yourself a deal. But if we're not seeing Sura's portion of the treasure, be sure you'll have to deal with the nastier aspects of our powers again."

Ak-vir's glare narrowed further, unaccustomed to taking threats without responding in kind. "Deal," he replied. He then looked to the Ganks, who had been following the trio behind, keeping a half meter back, though their weapons were still raised and aimed. The Weequay switched comm channels in his helmet, then spoke to the Ganks directly. "You two can be relaxed fer now. I got these two under control."

The Ganks looked to each other, and while they said nothing audible, Foyi could feel the suspicion arcing off of them. They seemed to consider whether to comply with the man who was not their direct superior, or perhaps they were unhappy with being too far from the only two people in the group they were allowed to kill readily. But finally, the Ganks dropped back, putting more than a meter and a half between themselves and their charges, apparently grudgingly content with leaving Ak-vir in their direct charge. And while Sho Sura, several meters behind them in the midst of the company, had not seen the lengthy and furtive conversation that had taken place between Ak-vir Vri and the two prisoners, he certainly noticed the guards he had assigned to oversee them dropping behind. The Gossam's voice crackled through the general comm channel slaved between their various vac suits, his words laden with suspicion. "Something wrong with the prisoners, Captain, yes?"

Ak-vir answered in a nonchalant tone, one so convincing, Foyi almost believed it herself. "Nothin' at all, Sura; these _karkin'_ nerfherders beat up on me earlier, an' I wanna find out why, is all, fer we feed 'em to the creatures or Zietta's boys or whatever other problems are down 'ere wit' us."

Sura did not answer as the troop continued moving at a more brisk pace, approaching the fork in the tunnel. Foyi could feel the suspicion rolling off of the Gossam in waves, suspicion that was turning to abject hostility and surface thoughts of murdering Ak-vir with a blaster bolt in the back before the Weequay could do the same to him. She focused her attention forward, moving with a more confident gait as she got used to the weight and limited range of movement provided by the vac suit. She felt her body tensing, anticipating an opportunity, any opportunity, that might be used to escape their predicament, though she forced herself to remain patient, to find her interior peace and to reside there, being mindful of the Force, allowing it to act for her, to merely be the instrument for its will. They soon found themselves at the fork in the tunnels, and she gave Rayf a glance, indicating that it was his prerogative on which route they should take, as it had been his idea to convince Ak-vir of the "treasure-finding" applications of the Force. She just hoped that the opportunity for escape would come long before the Weequay discovered how bogus those claims truly were.

Rayf gave Ak-vir a surreptitious gesture, indicating that they should take the passage leading to the right. Ak-vir did not acknowledge Rayf's motion, but did direct the company to the right. Foyi strained her senses, trying to get an impression, or possibly even premonition of what lay ahead. But there were no uses of the Force that allowed one to seek and locate treasure, or any inanimate objects not directly tied to the Force in its most fundamental nature. Her senses merely gave her a vague impression of moving down hill, as well as a growing sensation of claustrophobia. She took this to mean that the tunnel would be narrowing ahead, but her feelings in this manner could mean practically anything, including the possibility that she was becoming as anxious and paranoid as the thugs around her. Even the mercs working for Ak-vir and Sura could sense the heightening tension between the supposed partners of the endeavor. She could feel their anticipation rolling off of them and muddying the waters of her extrasensory perceptions.

Foyi stepped a little closer to Rayf and activated a comm channel that would go directly to his helmet and none other. "So," she began with irritation suffusing her voice. "We have 'treasure-finding' powers now."

Rayf's voice was light in tone, though she could feel the uncertainty leaking off of him. "Hey, just following the plan. We make it up as we go."

"The _plan_ was that _I_ make it up as we go along, and you follow my lead."

"I don't remember discussing this."

"It was implied. Keep up."

Rayf sighed. "Very well, oh fearless leader. Please enlighten me as to your plan for getting us out of this mess."

"Improvising? Remember? Trust the Force, and take whatever opportunity presents itself."

She could hear Rayf grumbling something under his breath, but the comm channel did not allow her to pick up on what was being said. She chose to ignore him, trusting that he would continue to do his part and remain inventive and capable, as he had proven on multiple occurrences in the short time she had known him. As the tunnel began to slowly but inexorably slope downhill, plunging deeper into the bowels of the comet, Foyi risked looking back at the mercs trudging behind them, receiving extrasensory perceptions of their captors, while scrutinizing their weapons, gear, and capabilities. The mercs constantly looked back and forth, their lights playing across the jagged, pockmarked walls. Most of the mercs that were not carrying scanners, sensors, datapads, and crates of mining equipment were openly displaying their weapons, a mixture of blaster pistols and rifles, including the occasional slugthrower, and even a disruptor rifle, carried by the Zygerrian. None of them were paying too close attention to the prisoners, trusting that Ak-vir and the Ganks trailing behind were capable of dealing with whatever issues Foyi and Rayf might attempt.

She returned her attention forward when Rayf tapped her shoulder. She activated the comm channel they shared once more, then asked irritably, "What?"

"Stretch out ahead of us with your feelings, and tell me if you're sensing the same thing I am."

Foyi did as bidden, submerging herself into the Force and sending the waves she made out into the darkness ahead, as if the Force itself was flowing in an invisible stream along the tunnel's contours, searching inquisitively as to what may be awaiting them. She deepened her concentration, stretching further, narrowing her focus to just ahead of her, blocking out the emotions and presences of those directly around and behind her. Her questing waves, when devoid of the distractions provided by those around her, found success when they encountered the soft ripples of distant emanations. She reached out with her feelings, her concentration and consciousness coming into crystallized focus as those ripples became presences removed by great distance and sentience. There was a large cluster of creatures somewhere down the tunnel's length, their rudimentary thought processes dominated by basic survival instinct and primal, instinctual urges. Whatever awaited them in the tunnels ahead were animals of some kind, though they belonged to a species Foyi had yet to encounter, and so she could surmise little about them, other than they were overtaken mostly by predatory instincts, and they felt hungry, as if they had not eaten in an inordinate amount of time. There were an alarming number of the creatures, huddled in a group that was almost as large as the one marching toward them. So the legends were true; there were creatures calling these Mines home, and judging by their insatiable hunger for raw flesh, they would be most happy to greet the expedition members, though the latter would not derive the same joy.

Foyi let a small grin play across her lips. They had found their opportunity.

Ak-vir, who had noticed the mostly nonverbal interactions between the two, saw Foyi's sardonic smile and stepped closer to his side, as if he believed the bulk he had on her would serve to intimidate her and provide him with answers to his yet-to-be-asked questions. "You've sensed somethin', haven't ya?"

She kept the smile on her face as she turned her faceplate to regard his. "We've found something alright. Something shiny and worth a cruiser's load of credits."

Greed lit his dark eyes, and he subconsciously licked his lips. "Where?"

"Keep leading us along this tunnel," Rayf interjected. "If we need to make any course corrections, we'll let you know."

Ak-vir nodded, but then he fingered his heavy blaster pistol at his belt. "Ya better not be lyin' ta me, yeah?"

"If we are, you can kill us," Foyi replied confidently.

The expedition continued down the tunnel, which narrowed considerably before widening again, opening up into an intersection of four different passages leading out into the darkness. By this point, both Rayf and Foyi were focused upon the cluster of creatures beyond their view, like bright beacons on the farthest reaches of their extended perceptions. They could not lose their way at this point, even if they tried, for the presences of the unknown animals were as prevalent to their senses as the beings moving about them. Foyi and Rayf pointed to the rightmost tunnel simultaneously, and Ak-vir led the group toward that tunnel. Foyi could feel the suspicions of Sura growing, but they were still directed more heavily toward the Weequay. The tunnel they had chosen was more narrow than any of the mining shafts they had traversed so far, forcing the expedition to continue with two sentients abreast at maximum. The walls closed in tight enough that they actually had to crouch through several areas where the ceiling had lowered, as if the comet itself was pressing down upon them, forbidding them from progressing further. But they were determined, and would not be denied their hopes for treasure, and even condensed their formation to single file when they needed to.

Then, as the presences of the creatures Rayf and Foyi were leading their unwitting captors to burned brightly in the Force, the tunnel opened suddenly into a wide cavern; whoever had dug the tunnel had broken through the wall of a natural cavern. The cavern was almost a dozen meters across, though their lights illuminated only a portion of it, revealing a cavern floor broken by haphazard ridges and fissures, streaked with patches of ice. They could feel the unseen creatures skittering through the darkness, using the stalactites, stalagmites, and fluctuating terrain for cover as their scrutinizing, hungry gazes watched the procession filtering into the cavern. Ak-vir looked to Rayf, who nodded his affirmation. The Weequay made an encompassing gesture toward those behind him, calling through the general comm channels, "Alright, this be lookin' like as good a place as any fer a pirate to be hidin' his booty! Spread out an' look fer caches, boxes, cargo cylinders, anythin' that looks like it might be holdin' treasure! I've got me a good feeling 'bout this cavern, 'ere."

Foyi sensed an imminent crisis coming to a head before Sho Sura emerged from the rest of the group and approached his partner, his features severe. "Alright, Ak-vir, I've had about enough, yes. You've been ignoring my calls on the comms for the last hour, leading this expedition wherever you seem to fancy, no matter what the sensor readings are saying. So far, we haven't picked up anything on scanners that indicates this would be a good place to find Fische's Legacy. What has you so certain this is the place to be?"

Ak-vir considered his question for a moment, though the deep concentration of his mind suggested that he was not contemplating a reply, but rather a course of action. The Weequay took a step toward the Gossam, and both of them had their hands resting on the hilts of their blasters by now. "The treasure's here 'cause their jeedai magic's tellin' me it's here." When Sura gave him the most incredulous expression a Gossam could manage, Ak-vir merely met it with scorn and a look of triumph. "Tha's right, Sura; I know all 'bout yer deal wit' these two. Hows ya had them try an' kill me so ya wouldn't haffta share Fische's treasure wit' me or me boys after they found it with their jeedai powers. Well, I'll let ya know, they was easy to turn, an' they tells me that the treasure is 'ere." His DL-44 was suddenly out of his holster, the barrel pointed directly at the Gossam's faceplate. "Well, here's me not needin' you, 'partner'."

As soon as Ak-vir had pulled his blaster, every weapon in the expedition left its holster or was shouldered. Vri's men aimed blasters at Sura or the Ganks the Gossams employed, and Sura's Ganks brought rifles to bear on the Weequay and his crew. In the space of a heartbeat, the only people in the room who did not have a weapon trained on them were the prisoners Foyi and Rayf.

Sura kept his clawed hand away from his hold-out blaster, but his voice dripped with anger and venom. "What in the eternal blue blazes are you talking about, Ak-vir? Are you some kind of _stoopa_? Those two don't have any kind of Jedi magic; the Jedi are just a myth! And I've never spoken or seen them in my life before today, no!"

Foyi and Rayf were now slowly edging away from the cluster of angry mercs and hot blasters, even as they continually buffeted their captors' minds with the Force, assaulting them with heavy suggestions and conflicting, emotional responses. Sura was not done speaking, angrily accusing Ak-vir based on suspicions that had been implanted by Foyi's manipulation. "In fact, you yourself admitted you had met them before, no? And then they just so happened to show up in my secret warehouse the same day you show up for this treasure hunt! You've been in league with them all along, and are merely blaming me for your underhanded maneuvers to try and justify shooting me now." He drew himself up to his full height, which was not particularly impressive, though he managed to remain threatening. "You should know, if you don't stand down, my Ganks will gun you and all your crew down like the sneaky nerfherders you are, yes."

Whether the entire quest for treasure would have ended upon the blasters of each other was a question never answered, for all of a sudden, one of the Houks in Ak-vir's crew started screaming. All eyes whirled to regard the Houk, who was in the midst of a macabre dance as he attempted to rid himself of the thick, corrosive substance that had inexplicably covered his vac suit. Smoke was rising from his body in great wafts as the acid hungrily ate through the material meant to protect from similar hazards, but seemed powerless to stop the erosive liquid. Even as the others watched in horror, their eyes were drawn to a ridge of stone and ice slightly above the Houk, where squatted a creature that was screeching soundlessly, as they could not hear exterior noises through their helmets. The monstrosity was a large arachnid about the size of an average human male, but consisted of a hefty thorax covered in plates of natural armor. Arrayed equidistantly around the fat body were five spindly legs, and at the front leered a horrifying, spider-like head containing five beady eyes and a mouth consisting of an equal number of beaks, clacking open and closed. Its beaks were still dripping with the spray of acid it had exuded, and it suddenly lunged forward, its forelegs reaching out to stab deep tears through the unfortunate Houk's envirosuit and into his flesh. His screaming through the general comm channel became higher in pitch and more frantic as he was lifted bodily to the waiting jaws of the monstrous spider, its beaks closing around his helmet and scrabbling for purchase.

And even as this gruesome sight transfixed the company, more such creatures sprang from the shadows, dropping from the ceiling and floating down toward their quarry in the low gravity like hawkbats diving upon unsuspecting duracrete slugs. The mercs cried out in unison and began firing their blasters randomly, lasers stabbing up into spiders; the creatures retaliated by spitting large splashes of acid across their suits. The cavern almost immediately devolved into a bloodbath of laserfire and acid, of vibroblades and stabbing claws.

Foyi and Rayf had distanced themselves from the company simply because they could feel the myriad spiders moving upon the group from the darkness, and so they were already a few meters away before the battle for food and survival began. Seeing the entire expedition embroiled in their fight, Foyi reached out a hand, the telekinetic grip of the Force answering her commands. The Zygerrian's disruptor rifle was suddenly torn from his grasp, a second before he turned it upon one of the spiders which then throttled him, seeing he possessed no more weaponry. The weapon slapped into her waiting palms and she whirled to the side, already aiming the rifle at the spot on the ground where one of the spiders would land. The green bolt of energy that sprung from the barrel's end contacted the ground the same second the spider's legs did, and like a miniature seismic charge, the bolt went off, ripping the spider to shreds in a shower of armored plating, ichor, and acid. She then shifted her aim to fire past Rayf, who, in tune with her motions in the Force, dropped to the ground as the green bolt whizzed through the space where his body once was. The bolt met another spider's charge head on, and the spider was practically split in half lengthwise by the force of the resultant blast.

Rayf sprang upward, putting the Force behind his movements even as he let the low gravity carry him aloft, up to one of the stalagmites. He clung to the protrusion, then crooked a hand, and a blaster rifle dropped by one of the mercs in the process of being devoured by an arachnid flew to outstretched fingers. The weapon's hilt had barely slapped into his palm when he whirled his body about the stalagmite and fired in Foyi's direction, the blaster bolt slicing through the face of a spider that was attempting to throttle her from behind. Foyi sent her appreciation through the Force, then urged him to get moving, to find a way for them to escape this deathtrap they had led their captors into. Most of the spiders they had sensed in this nest were busy tearing apart and consuming the mercs, though experience with dozens of fights and withering blasterfire was beginning to thin their numbers. Even so, several of the spiders had broken off from the main foray and were approaching Foyi and Rayf, believing the lone targets the easiest to take down.

Foyi fired a few disruptor blasts into the morass of mercs and spiders, then turned and fled, the low gravity making her short strides great leaps that carried her across the cavern in seconds. But the arachnids knew how to benefit from the low gravity as well, and they were right on their heels. The Twi'lek dropped into a clumsy roll, feeling the spray of acid at her back before it was even released by the lead spider. The glob of acid arced over her flailing limbs and impacted the cavern wall, splashing and melting the stone in ragged scars. She turned over on her back only for the lead spider to scrabble atop her, its forelegs stabbing downward, aiming for her faceplate and her torso. She swung the disruptor like an unwieldy club, letting the Force guide her defense and anticipate the movements her enemy would take. She managed to block heavy claws, knocking them aside, then kicking out with her feet. The motion was slow and hampered by her vac suit, but the impact was enhanced by the Force, her booted feet connecting with the spider just beneath the beaks, sending it spinning end over end through the cavern. She struggled to her feet just as two more spiders reached her with their claws, but the Twi'lek shoved her hand forward and let the Force become a wave running through her arm and erupting from her palm with the force of a tsunami. The telekinetic push was augmented by the low gravity, sending the spiders spinning away like missiles.

Rayf landed beside her, having dropped from the stalagmite above. His voice was calm and serene, and he was a bastion of light and solidarity in the Force, almost as if the battle around him served him as a means for him to attain inner peace he was able to share with her through the burgeoning connection they were developing. "Foyi! I think I've found our way out of here!"

She did not hesitate to follow him as they did an awkward hopping sprint across the cavern, their bobbing lights illuminating the gaping opening to another tunnel leading from the cavern. Both angled for it, Rayf taking the lead, while Foyi looked back over her shoulder to make certain they were not being followed. No spiders were pursuing them, but she did see a single figure that had broken from the ferocious melee to lope across the rough terrain in short leaps and bounds, his blaster pistol coming up to take aim. Foyi could not see the face through the helmet's transparisteel at this distance, but she could feel the man's presence, and knew it to be the loathed Ak-vir Vri, bent on revenge for her deception. He squeezed off a trio of shots, but the blasterbolts went wide due to his bouncing run, spattering the rock beside the tunnel's opening. Foyi ignored it and dived through the opening, Rayf's hand fastening on her shoulder and hauling her into the passage.

Foyi stood, about to offer her gratitude, when she was suddenly bowled over by another body clad in a bulky vac suit. She struggled to right herself, kicking out as unfriendly limbs tried to level a blaster at her. A blasterbolt went off, but it went wide again, and the flash gave her a direction to aim her kick, her boot connecting with a hand clenched around a blaster pistol's hilt. The body struggling with her, the form of Ak-vir, contorted around that hand as the pain that shot through his arm caused him to lose his grip on his DL-44, the weapon spinning away. Foyi swung her disruptor rifle, striking the man's faceplate and shoving him off of her. The Weequay cried out through the general comm channel as he slammed against the wall of the tunnel. He pushed against the wall to get upright again, to locate his lost blaster, but went stock still, slumping against the stone as he realized that Foyi had slammed the barrel of the disruptor rifle in his gut.

Foyi could feel the darker waters of the Force rushing in her ears, the black desires demanded by vengeance tantalizing in her mind. Her finger flexed on the trigger guard, her entire body quivering as the Dark Side rushed into her like a torrent, a voice shouting within her mind and her spirit to take her well-deserved revenge, to blow the scum at the end of her weapon to so many pieces he would never be recognizable as a Weequay, much less an individual. She looked down through Ak-vir's faceplate and licked her lips at what she saw there, the delicious expression of fear contorting his features and soaking his aura in the Force. She could almost taste how sweet his death would be on the back of her tongue, and his naked fear only served to heighten her bloodlust, to beg her to pull the trigger.

Her finger was just curling around the trigger when she felt a glove set upon her shoulder, the sensation coming from a great distance, as if she had become almost completely detached from her body and physical form. But with that hand came a soothing, calming presence, light gracing the churning storm and white-capped waves broiling within her. She turned slightly to see Rayf standing beside her, his hand on her shoulder. His expression was calm, serene, only slightly tinged by deep concern. Concern for her, concern for Ak-vir's life. Concern for her soul. He met her gaze, then said simply, "Foyi. It's alright; let it go."

Foyi returned his regard, the rage and anger bubbling within her core calming, the waves crashing about her consciousness slowly becoming a gentle, warm sea. She looked back to Ak-vir Vri, the man who had kidnapped her sister and sold her into slavery, and for the first time since she had seen his face, she felt only pity for him. For this was a man who would never know true companionship, joy, family, or anything in life that was truly worth living. She could do no worse to him than what he had already inflicted upon his own soul. The anger faded, Foyi took a deep breath, then triggered her helmet's comm channel at the same time she reached out to the Weequay's terrified mind, immersing herself in his surface thoughts and feelings. "Do you know where the Shepherd has my sister?" she asked in a calm, collected tone.

Ak-vir shook his head. "No, no, no I dunno. I only get my jobs from Yuelo...Yuelo would know how to be findin' the Shepherd."

Foyi sighed, having sensed no deception from the Weequay. What he said was true, or at very least, was what he believed to be true. She reached out to him with a wave of the Force, stretching out her hand to touch his faceplate even as she mentally bid his mind to rest. Ak-vir's eyes fluttered, then his head slumped to the side as the Force sank him into a deep sleep. He slumped against the tunnel's wall, lost to the waking world. Foyi stepped back from the Weequay, taking in a quivering inhalation, then glanced through the opening back into the cavern. She could no longer see the flashes of blasterfire, though there were still shouts, orders, and expletives coming over the general comm channel, suggesting that ultimately, some of the mercs had survived the nest of vicious arachnids. She turned to Rayf, who gave her shoulder a comforting pat, and merely said, "Let's find our way out of here."

As she moved past him to proceed down the tunnel, Rayf smiled, responding with a cheery, "Sounds stellar to me."


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

The tunnel in which Foyi and Rayf found themselves was as dark and treacherous as the rest of the labyrinthine passages they had been traversing in the bowels of Resh 9376. The terrain was uneven, the floor seeming to jut upward merely to trip the travelers, who already walked across it on uncertain footing. Side tunnels snaked off from their main passage, too small for most humanoids to enter but just the right size for the diminutive and ancient mining and astromech droids that were most likely responsible for the mines they passed through. They had to traipse through fifty meters or more of the tunnel before its meandering path diverged, which became an easier journey the farther they went, putting greater distance between themselves and the artificial gravity generators that regulated Point Nadir's proper. Foyi kicked aside a stone in her path that must have weighed nearly nine kilograms, watching it bounce and clatter across the floor, as if it were as light as the feather of a convor. Her stride did not need to be long for her steps to carry her far, and she found herself hopping and skipping across the treacherous floor more often than walking across it. One of those hops brought her to the mouth of a tunnel that peeled off from the main passage, where Rayf was already standing silently beside, staring into the darkness ahead, the lights on his helmet only illuminating the next few meters beyond the opening.

Foyi added her own lights to the illuminated space, revealing another cramped and rough-hewn passage moving onward into further darkness. She checked the readouts on her helmet's HUD, and found her oxygen tank starting to dip toward disturbing levels. The atmosphere in this portion of the comet's guts was no longer sustainable for life, as the oxygen content had grown too scarce, and the temperatures had nearly approached the absolute zero of cold vacuum. This most likely meant there were tunnels and caverns nearby that opened out into space itself. Rayf looked back at her, though she could see little past the lights shining from his helmet. "You don't suppose there's some sort of tunnel around here that curves back to the shadowport, do ya?"

Foyi shrugged, then looked back the way they had come. They had lost contact with the general comm channel used by Vri and Sura's mercenaries over an hour ago, either due to damage done to those systems, the mercenaries, or the distance and ore-filled walls of rock separating the two groups. Neither had Foyi picked up any of their surface thoughts or presences in the Force over that period of time, so it was unlikely they would encounter the surviving mercenaries again in the veritable maze of mining shafts and tunnels. Even so, retracing their steps was not an option, as there was too much of a risk that many of the mercenaries had survived, or there were still more of the vicious arachnids lying in ambush at unknown locations. Not to mention the possibility of running afoul of Zietta the Hutt's patrols that their captors had suggested randomly explored the tunnels, looking for valuables, looters, and trespassers. "The only one we know is the one from whence we came," Foyi answered. "Unless you also happen to have an extensive knowledge of this section of the comet."

Rayf snorted. "Sorry, sweetheart. I've never been in the Mines myself...supposedly, no one comes here 'cause Zietta's declared the Mines off-limits. In practice, she and her scum rarely have any real presence here, letting the threat of her decree and the legends of those Nadir spiders we found back there scare people off. You get the occasional spacer or grifter searching for Fische's Treasure down here, but we left the most comprehensive record of these tunnels back with Sura. We could end up wandering around in these tunnels for ages and never find our way back."

Foyi sighed. "Thanks for the encouragement and positivity, Rayf. I suppose we'll just have to find our own way back. We don't have the time or oxygen to waste wandering...Tama doesn't have the time either."

Rayf's hand groped behind his back, touching the oxygen compartment strapped to his back. "Of course those Ganks didn't have the common decency to provide us with extra tanks."

Foyi gestured with her disruptor rifle. "At least they provided us with weapons."

Rayf looked down at the A280 Blaster Rifle he cradled between his hands, and while she could not physically see his face through the faceshields of their helmets, she could feel his dubious signature in the Force. "I'll try to remain grateful of that fact when I'm clutching this blaster as I slowly choke to death inside this suit."

"How are your oxygen levels?"

"Not great. Yours?"

She did not need to say anything for him to be supplied an answer. He sighed, a static-laden noise through the localized comm channel they were using. "Let's get moving then. Hopefully, we can find a tunnel that might lead us back to Point Nadir."

"I don't want ours and Tama's fate to rely on blind luck as we wander through these tunnels."

"That's not what I was suggesting. You told me earlier to trust the Force, and that's what I intend to do." He gestured at the opening of the tunnel diverging from their previous passage. "And the Force is telling me to go this way."

Foyi arched her brow in suspicion. She would have submerged herself in the Force to see if her feelings and instincts coincided with his, but she could not bring herself to touch it at this moment. Not so soon after her latest balancing act upon the very lip of oblivion that was the Dark Side. "I thought you had a problem with purely trusting the Force; something about how much it annoyed you when you were told to do so by an old Jedi Master."

Rayf shrugged. "Sure, it annoyed me, frustrated me when I was just a youngling. But I'm not too proud to admit Tholme and Zao were always in the right place and right time. If the Force is truly looking out for us, maybe we'll get pure sabacc for once."

Foyi began to stride down the indicated tunnel, grumbling into her comlink, "I wouldn't hold my breath."

"You might have to in the next couple hours if we hope to survive."

They proceeded down the new tunnel Rayf assured her was advantageous to getting out of their current predicament, though Foyi was fairly certain he knew almost nothing of what he was doing. The tunnel grew wider the further they traveled, gently sloping upward. There were more craters, fissures, and pockmarks in the walls here where ores had been harvested by long dead or defunct sentients and droids, leaving nothing but gaping holes and dusty refuse in their wake. The sound of her own breathing was loud in her ears, echoing within the helmet and giving her an eerie feeling, as if she and Rayf were the only two people left in an entire galaxy of silence. She had never had problems with claustrophobia before, but she was beginning to feel the sheer size and weight of the stone enclosing her like a palpable presence weighing upon her mind. Her eyes kept flicking to the side, glancing at the oxygen readouts nervously, a niggling, darkling voice in the back of her mind whispering that this comet would be her tomb. A tomb of rock, ore, and depravity hurtling through the void.

Rayf stumbled over some detritus ahead of her, and he paused to stare down at it. Half buried in dust and sand, an ice slick keeping it fastened to the floor of the tunnel, were remnants of a mining droid. The metal parts were so corroded and worn with age and exposure to radiation that they were nearly unidentifiable; for all Foyi knew, they could have belonged to Salovan Fische's protocol droid, assuming a space pirate had any use for a droid nattering on about proper etiquette. She merely assumed the parts were once portions of a mining droid, and left her ruminations at that. She cast a glance at Rayf, who shrugged and continued on. Foyi did a short, floating hop over the debris so that she would not catch her feet and fall, then followed behind him, only to nearly run into him when she realized he had stopped again. She grunted in annoyance and looked past his shoulder to see the tunnel had opened into a small cavern, little more than a lobby for the divergence of four more tunnels, as well as almost a dozen smaller passageways made byskittering creatures or automata. There were a few gaping holes near the ceiling of the roughly-hewn cavern that looked suspiciously like mynock nests, though Foyi's subdued senses caught no presences denoting nearby creatures. Cautiously, she reached out into the Force, creating a ripple that meandered outward and into the immediate surroundings, but the only signatures in the Force she felt was Rayf's. Rayf stood with an introspective stance, looking in turn to each of the openings. There was a crackle across the comlink, and his voice came to her ear. "Well...whaddya think?"

Foyi concentrated, her eyes roving between the different openings, sinking beneath the waters of the Force. She let a small gasp out as she did so, however, for the waters of the Force were clamoring and crashing against her mind and spirit. At first, she believed she had come to a place where the Force was in turmoil, perhaps standing upon the site of some ancient Dark Side act, making it nearly impossible for her to utilize or even feel it in any meaningful way. But it only took her a moment of introspection to realize that the Force was merely reacting to her own emotional turmoil. It was only when she was truly at peace that she could focus enough to merge with the Force and bend it to her will. She momentarily remembered how the Dark Side fed off raw emotion, how it grew within her, made her powerful when she gave into her inner struggle, and she shied away from it, as well as the Force altogether. Rayf must have sensed her pain and indecisiveness, for he turned to her, illuminating her quivering form with the lights on his helmet. "Hey. You okay?"

"Stellar," came Foyi's predictable lie. "Why don't...which way do _you_ think we should go?"

Rayf continued looking at her for a moment, then swiveled back to face the dark maws representing their menagerie of choices presented them. His arm came up to indicate the opening the farthest to the left. "I've got a good feeling about this one."

Foyi shrugged and hefted her disruptor again. "Well, as long as you've a good feeling, we might as well try it."

Rayf's voice was wry as it buzzed through the comlink. "'Do or do not. There is no try.'"

Foyi had been proceeding toward the tunnel her companion had indicated, but she paused to glance back at the human. "What's that? Some sort of Matukai wisdom?"

"Just something another Jedi Master I knew before getting kicked out of the Temple used to say to the younglings. He was of the opinion that you either do something, or don't. You succeed or fail. He had a...very black and white view of the galaxy, to say the least."

"Sounds like he was rather narrow-minded."

"And infuriating. And green." Rayf sighed, lost in his distant past, in a time period where the Jedi existed and the shadow of the Empire had yet to fall over the galaxy. "He was one of the wisest men I ever knew."

The pair fell into silence as Foyi led the way through the tunnel Rayf had selected. This tunnel was far more narrow than the previous one, the walls and ceiling jutting toward them in random fingers of stone, scraping across the heavy fabric of their suits and clanging against their oxygen cartridges when they stooped to pass the stalactites. At one point, the Twi'lek had to crawl on her hands and knees to squeeze through the narrowing confines, slipping through a hole that was little more than a slit in the rock before her. She tumbled through the other side, hitting the ground on the other side in a soft fall, stirring up a cloud of dust and ice fragments in her wake. She looked up to see that the tunnel had now widened into a small cavern, narrowing ahead again into a proper tunnel. There were more broken droids and mining equipment in this brief cave, as well as the remains of what appeared to have been a mynock. She scuttled out of the way as Rayf squeezed himself through the opening to deposit his form on the slick, icy, floor. They pushed themselves up to their feet, Rayf absentmindedly dusting himself off before looking about the cave. Foyi nervously checked her HUD again, and saw that her oxygen levels had dipped down to thirty percent. She felt an ice-cold fist of panic grasp at her heart, but she forced herself to continue breathing normally, slowly, and peacefully, in the hope that such action would help conserve her remaining oxygen. Whether it would or not had yet to be determined, as she knew almost nothing about vacsuits, considering this was the first time she had found herself in an environment requiring one.

"How's your oxygen?"came Rayf's voice in her ear, apparently sensing the origin of the rising trepidation in her Force presence.

"It's hovering at thirty percent," she replied, trying to keep a quiver from her voice. She lengthened her stride, putting more urgency into her movement and letting the low gravity carry her father and faster than she had been moving previously, down the continuing, cloying darkness of the tunnel ahead. "We need to keep moving. We're probably still kilometers away from the spaceport, and if my directions weren't completely _karked_ up by that ride in the back of the speeder truck, then we're still moving away from Point Nadir."

"Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, considering how many people want to wear our heads as hats back there. Though I wouldn't be too happy about leaving _The Flamusfracta_ behind."

"Neither would I. So far, it is our only way to reach Tama...once we find out where this 'Shepherd' took her." She glanced back over her shoulder, though the helmet's nigh-complete lack of peripheral vision made it difficult to see Rayf beyond the vague silhouette of his form. "You've quite a few contacts in the underworld of the galaxy. Have you ever heard of 'the Shepherd' before?"

"I would have told you if I had," Rayf replied. "I mean, it _sounds_ kind of familiar, but as big as the galaxy is and as much scum is in the underbelly of civilization, there's probably more than one _sleemo_ who goes by that monicker."

Foyi sighed, her outlook grim on the future course of actions she knew they would have to take. "Then we'll just have to persuade Yuelo to fill us in on his business associate."

"Look, I know we've both taken some stun blasts and repeated blows to the head since docking with this comet, but I've still enough faculties to remember that Yuelo...doesn't _like_ us very much."

Foyi gave an exasperated snort at his sarcasm. "As do I. But Yuelo's a Hutt, a cantina owner, fight organizer, and slaver part-time, which means he's making deals with people who want to kill him, or people he wants to kill, all the time. I'm sure we can all come to a mutually agreeable arrangement that will not result in any more unnecessary deaths."

Rayf laughed. "You really _are_ new to the galaxy, aren't you? Thinking a Hutt can be reasonable..."

"That sounds rather prejudiced-"

"That's the _truth_ , sweetheart. Besides, what have we to give that Yuelo would want, besides our lives ending slowly in the jaws of some rancor?"

Foyi grunted in frustration as she vaulted over a large outcropping of stone that was more akin to a cave collapse than a stalagmite. "I'm grasping at straws here, flyboy. Yuelo knows where and how to find this Shepherd and Tama; there's got to be some way to convince him to share that information with us." She paused, feeling an eddy of shame shiver through her subconscious. "Without shooting up his place again...or beating anyone to a pulp."

Rayf took a light hop forward, drawing to her side now that the tunnel had opened up enough for the pair of them to walk shoulder to shoulder. His gloved hand came up to rest on that shoulder, and she could feel a soft current of encouragement and comfort lapping at the edges of her mind. "I'm very glad to hear that, Foyi. I mean, I don't mind teaching a _murglak_ a lesson when he really needs it, and I've no problem with giving thugs and Hutt goons a taste of my wan-shen when backed into a corner. But you are right to admit that your actions of late have been more...extreme than they probably need to be. 'Course, I'm not blaming you entirely; I'm at fault as well, considering there was a lot I could do to stop you, and didn't. I saw you back there, with Ak-vir. I could feel your anger, your rage, your hatred for that sack of bantha _poodoo_ , but most importantly, I could feel how badly you wanted to splatter him all over the wall with that disruptor. Many would say you had the right to do so, and I'm not arguing that you didn't; but such an action would have taken you to the Dark Side. And that's a slippery slope most do not come back from. I'm not sure if we've known each other long enough for this to matter, and the chances of us suffocating in this comet are pretty good so I doubt it's much consolation, but I just wanted you to know that I'm proud of you. The galaxy is too steeped in darkness as it is; the Light Side's going to need every Force-user that still survives outside of Palpatine's black gaze."

Foyi did not know how to respond, so she said nothing at first. While it was true that she and Rayf had not known each other long, and she had initially seen him as merely a means to an end through which she might be reunited with Tama, she did find his words comforting. But this sense of pride and belonging lasted for only a moment, for the images of Lido's mangled and blaster-scarred body swam into her foremost thought, and the guilt she felt could not be contained as it engulfed her consciousness. In the decisive moment with Ak-vir, when she had had the bastard completely at her mercy, she had managed to stave off the allure of the Dark Side, but she was already tainted by it, for she had succumbed to its power and her own evil impulses. Even now, as she attempted to keep herself closed off from the Force, she could feel the grimy, oily undercurrent that bore the Dark Side's corruption, just below the surface of her subconscious. It was there, waiting for her to call upon it, to immerse herself in its power and tear apart the entire galaxy if necessary to find and reunite with her sister. She rolled her shoulder to dislodge Rayf's hand and continued to stride forward and past him. She could not bear to speak to him, much less have him touch her after he had shown such faith in her. She was not deserving of his praise, and hearing it only made her feel worse about herself and her past actions.

Rayf caught up with her in only a moment, concern in his aura, but did not make a move to touch her again. "Foyi? Something's wrong, isn't it? Was it something I said?"

Foyi shook her head, though her helmet barely moved from its sealed, rigid position. "I-I'm sorry...I'm sorry that you had to see me like this. That...you saw the things I did. I'm glad to hear that you still think highly of me, though I don't deserve it. I've done...some terrible things. Things I'm not proud of, and I've used Tama to justify the actions that go against every personal principle and code of the Zeison Sha." She felt an unbidden tear slip from the corner of her eye, and her _lekku_ shivered uncomfortably with emotion. "I—I just want her back... _so badly_. She's all I have in this miserable galaxy, Rayf, and if she dies...I don't know what I would do."

She could get little sense of Rayf's presence or his emotions as he became introspective for a lengthy moment. They were just rounding another bend in the tunnel before Rayf finally spoke again. "When I first began my training to be a Jedi-"

"The training you failed at?"

"Yeah, that one. Thanks for reminding me. Anyway, one of the first lessons we were taught about the Force and our relationships to others was that we were to avoid attachment. In fact, it was one of the major tenets of the entire Jedi Order. As Jedi , we were to give up all possessions, and the most meaningful relationships we could form with other people, even our fellow Jedi, could never go beyond casual friendship. Passion, possession, commitment were all forbidden, for as Jedi, the negative consequences of entering into such relationships could be catastrophic to oneself and all they cared about. At least, that was what we were told, and I believed it wholeheartedly." He was quiet for a moment, peering back through the annals of his past, looking for how his experiences could provide his companion insight. "The Matukai, however, had a different philosophy regarding attachment. While they were similar to the Jedi on many of these stances, Matukai taught that personal relationships, and even attachments, could be sources of strength to Force-users. My master taught me that as Matukai, we were to attain a perfect balance between the physical and spiritual aspects of our existences. To be a Matukai is to walk through daily life with the Force sustaining your body just as blood and oxygen does, and to keep oneself in balance with the multiple aspects of one's physiology, spirituality, and mentality. In this respect, Matukai are ultimately expected to be self-sufficient, and yet totally reliant on the Force. But no man is a planet, and to deny oneself attachment and close relationships in a galaxy full of trillions of sentient beings is to do oneself a great disservice. This was one of the major problems the Matukai teachings took with the Jedi's stance on attachment. They found their attitude elitist, cold and aloof, but more dangerously, could lead the Jedi to become estranged from those they deemed to help in this galaxy of turmoil. The Jedi Masters used to preach that attachment ultimately led to jealousy, and that was of the Dark Side. But I can't help but wonder if the lack of attachment, of personal involvement and stake with others, wasn't one of the reason so many Jedi fell to the Dark Side over the past millennia."

Foyi sniffed, wishing she could wipe away the tear that was now drying on her cheek. "Which philosophy do you think is correct?"

She could almost feel the shrug he made when he answered. "I don't know; if I did, I think I would be wise enough to avoid getting myself into a situation like this, or the rest of the fiascoes I've barely survived over the years. I just wanted to present both of these philosophies I've learned regarding the Force and relating to others in one's life. Of course, there are probably a million different views on this subject from all kinds of Force-using traditions...most of which you can't ask these days, thanks to our good ol' buddy the Emperor." He cleared his throat, a loud burst of feedback over the comm channel. "The point I'm trying to make, Foyi, is that I can clearly see that you love your sister, and you want her to be safe, and happy, and carefree, and I believe that is a good thing, a great thing, in fact. I believe your relationship with Tama is a source of strength, probably for both of you, considering you are the only family either one of you have. However, I would suggest that you examine your own motivations for wanting to reunite with Tama. Do you feel a sense of responsibility for her since she is your younger sister and there is no one else to guide and care for her? Do you consider her to be an essential part of your life, and the two of you are better and stronger together than you are apart? Or do you want to find her because you see her as 'yours', and the thought that someone stole her from you angers you? Do you fear to face life without her because she has always been with you? Love, Foyi, is a beautiful and healthy emotion, but it can also be an ugly and jealous thing that consumes you if you let it. I am with you in this, Foyi; I want to see you and Tama reunited. I just want to make sure you want to see Tama again for all the right reasons, and I want you to prepare yourself for the possibility that we may find her too late."

Foyi mused over his words, many of them making sense, others stinging her deeply, cutting her to the core as keenly as any lightsaber would. She turned her head to the side to look at Rayf, and she could see his eyes sparkling behind his faceplate, staring intently at her. While their eyes met, she could feel his Force presence, his mind reaching out to hers, respectfully trying to get some reading of her thoughts, though she kept herself closed off from the Force. She cracked an awkward smile she did not feel. "Okay, 'Master' Rayf, when did you get so smart?"

She could hear the grin in his voice. "Always have been, Foyi. I just don't act like it 'cause it's easier to blend in with the crowd. Look, we're going to find Tama, and we'll hang Yuelo by his tail if that's what it takes to get to her, because ultimately, she is an innocent victim in all this. Just keep your mind on helping your sister, on seeing her again, and you'll be fine. The galaxy is a dark place, Foyi, but you don't have to lose yourself to the darkness, and you don't have to face that darkness alone."

Foyi turned away, feeling a true sense of calm for the first time since she had set her eyes upon Ak-vir Vri. She would not openly admit it, but the fact that she would not have to look for her sister in a galaxy she did not comprehend on her own was one of the most soothing aspects of this entire search so far. She had not known Rayf long at all, but she had received a complete sense of him in the Force near constantly since traveling with him, and she felt like she had known him for years. That she had found a kindred spirit. She cleared the emotion growing in her throat, then squeaked, "Thanks...thanks, Rayf."

"No problem, Foyi."

She faced forward, down the tunnel that was slowly undulating upward, the floor climbing up in ragged steps, as if the mining droids of ancient times had haphazardly tried to cut a set of stairs for any bipeds that may have followed them. The pair of them stumbled up those ridges and small ravines, hopping over stalagmites and meandering around collapsed sections of the tunnel. Foyi glanced at her HUD again, and saw that the ambient temperature was dropping rapidly the farther they moved up the tunnel. Meanwhile, the composition of the atmosphere in the passage was thinning as well, to the point that they would survive only a minute or so without their envirosuits. She triggered the comlink, concern leaking into her voice. "I don't think we're any closer to Point Nadir."

"No. But we're closer to a way to get around this _stang_ maze we're lost in."

"What do you mean?"

The tunnel ahead turned a gradual corner to the right, where it bisected with several meandering passages, forming a sort of intersection. Most of the tributary tunnels branched off into darkness, some curving around corners, others sloping down into the comet, while others meandering upward. One of those tunnels ended in a gaping, cave-like opening that showed a different kind of darkness, more like a cold, silver twilight than the midnight blackness of the others. Foyi was about to point it out, but Rayf passed her and half-hopped, half-strode toward the opening, soon coming to the lips and clambering out, bumping his shins, elbows, and oxygen pack in the narrow confines. This elicited a string of curses as he did so, but then his voice rang through the comlink, breathless and excited. "Come on, Foyi! We made it!"

Foyi scrambled up the slope behind him, the floor curving up into a jagged wall where her hands and boots found purchase to lever herself up and through the opening. She slammed her knee against the side of the fissure, but the low gravity and the effort in her arms pulled her through and into a world of silvery light beyond. The walls and ceilings soared away from her as she no longer found herself within the claustrophobic mines, but rather on the outside of Resh 9376, emerging from a mineshaft at the bottom of a crater, the gray-silver walls of the the stone rising a few meters above her, creating a rough circle that framed an entire universe of stars. She gasped with a combination of wonder and horror at the starfield wheeling above her, occasionally obscured by spinning shards of ice and stone as they whizzed past in their erratic orbits. Rayf was already pushing off the floor of the crater from the lip of the cave opening, his inertia sufficient to escape Resh's substandard gravitational pull. He had angled his flight to bump into the edge of the crater above him, his hands scrabbling for purchase before he altered his flight, doing a flip with the crater's edge as his fulcrum, slamming his booted feet on the comet's surface. He turned to look down into the crater at his companion, offering a hand. "Come on up. The weather's great up here."

Foyi struggled to her feet, then shoved off just as he had. Her limbs flailed awkwardly with the sudden weightlessness, and that motion set her into a sudden uncontrolled spin that only served to propel her further up and out of the crater, on a journey that would speed her to the outer reaches of the comet's atmosphere, and possibly into the cold, endless embrace of space itself. However, she suppressed the instinct to panic, instead reaching down into the depths of the Force and expanding her consciousness. She found Rayf's spike of concern through the Force, and used it as an anchoring beacon to direct her efforts as she willed herself toward him. Suddenly, her spin began to straighten out, and she found herself in the embrace of the Force as she floated down toward the edge of the crater, finally touching upon the surface beside Rayf with a cloud of dust that began to float several meters away before settling back in the depths of the crater. Rayf reached out with a steadying arm, but withdrew it when he realized the Twi'lek did not require the aid. She glanced around to look at the uneven, jagged terrain stretching to a grimy gray horizon around them. The crater they emerged from appeared to have been blown into the peak of a stony ridge, from which point tumbled craggy slopes, ridges, and needle-like spires of rock jutting up into the void of space. The slopes falling away from them were slicked with ice, descending in a series of random, tiered ridges, sheer drops, and ice-slicked gradations that fell away into the larger expanse of the comet's mass. Thrusting up around them at random levels were jagged peaks above and below them, attempting to spear the miniscule pinpricks of light that floated through the black void. From small openings and craters pockmarking the comet's surface exuded jets of compressed gas and freezing ice shards, forming geysers of escaping atmosphere that devolved into plumes drifting through Resh's nonexistent sky. Foyi strode forward carefully, the tips of her boots meeting the lip of a ledge that dropped down hundreds of meters to lower slopes and peered down, where she could barely see the edge of the gaping maw that was the Jackrab Hole, kilometers away.

She turned to Rayf with incredulity and trepidation evident in her tone. "You're not seriously thinking of having us walk down to the Jackrab Hole and back into the Tethers."

"Why not?"

She looked to her oxygen readout again and found it hovering at about twenty-five percent. She could already feel the atmosphere in her helmet growing stale and heavy with carbon dioxide. "That's kilometers away, not to mention however long the tunnel from the Jackrab Hole to Fische's Cove is. We'll be choking on fumes long before then."

"Not if we hurry. Besides, you want to wander around the Mines until we die of carbon dioxide poisoning?" When he received no reply, he continued. "First spacewalk, right?"

"Yeah." She could already feel her body quivering with apprehension as she stared down that slope.

"You'll be fine. Think of it as a walk through the parks of Corellia, only there's a big chance you'll float away if you jump too high."

Foyi let shock ripple through her Force presence. "Is that supposed to be comforting?" But she received no answer, as Rayf leapt free of the cliff, kicking his feet back slightly so that his flight was horizontal, his head lowering more than his legs as his flight began to draw him down toward the ridges and layers below. He was flying by the miniscule gravity and tiny nudges of the Force that slowly angled him down to the surface far below, while moving his limbs to bank left, then right, as he avoided the outcroppings of rocks and the plumes of gas and ice erupting from the scattering of geysers. Foyi watched him as his body diminished in size, becoming a gray speck in a world of grays, silver, and black. She let out a heavy exhalation, then stepped off the ledge and into open space. It felt as though her stomach had dropped out through the soles of her boots as she left the familiarity of solid ground, though she felt a slight downward pull as Resh refused to completely release its gravitic hold on her. Foyi's trepidation became a brief spike of exhilaration as she realized that she was flying, like she was free of any restrictions or inhibitions, completely weightless amongst the endless stars. She dipped her body to the side, and began to drift in that direction. She leaned to the left, kicking with her legs like she was swimming underwater, and she began a slow spin in the direction she leaned, which allowed her to avoid the rocky face of a spire emerging before her. She passed within a few meters of its icy face and received a brief glimpse of striated layers of ore covered in ice, sparkling like corusca gems in the lights from her helmet. She turned her head to look ahead, then imitated Rayf's movement by dipping her head below her chest, while twisting her feet above her to arrow down toward the lowest regions of the surface below her. She could not see Rayf below and ahead of her, his form having blended in with the silently turbulent face of Resh 9376 stretching as far as she could see before her. But she could still feel his presence in the Force somewhere ahead, his life force like a star glinting upon the surface of existence she swam through. And the impression he got from him was one evoking excitement, suffusing his presence as if this were the single greatest experience of his life.

Foyi withdrew her senses from the focus upon Rayf and concentrated on drawing closer to the surface below her. She sent waves of the Force like a tide out at the rocks, could feel the pressure on her feet when they rested upon solid ground. She felt those waves splash against something solid before her, and she opened her eyes in time to see the spire of stone standing like a sentinel's forcepike. She whirled her body to the right, but instead of spinning out of control, she gathered the Force around her to slow and control her inertia. She flew within centimeters of the stone structure, but was not concerned, fully immersed within the Force and knowing with certainty she would not collide with it. She let her eyes drift closed again as she descended for several meters, and could feel the geyser of ice and gas erupting in her path several meters before she drew within range. Another languid roll altered her path of flight, and only the barest fingers of the resulting plume lashed against the outside of her vacsuit. Foyi opened her eyes again, and now the details of the ridges, craters, and crannies of the comet's surface were much sharper in her vision, rushing up to meet her. She sank deeper into the Force, using it to fashion a sort of bubble about her, a cushion that struck the fallen rocks and uneven ground and slowed her descent. She felt a brief moment of pride when she landed feet first and remained upright, though she stumbled for a mere moment as her legs required a few seconds to reacquaint themselves with the feeling of standing upon solid ground.

There was a cloud of dust and shards of ice, and Rayf was suddenly by her side, clapping her on the back with a hearty _whoop_ assaulting her ears over the comms. "And who said Twi'leks couldn't fly? You're a natural, Foyi! I don't think I've seen better low g maneuvering since I tangled with those V-Wings over Kril'dor!"

Foyi let out a shaking breath, but ultimately, she felt fine, the Force still buzzing within her. She stood straight to see the cliff that denoted the lip of the Jackrab Hole only a kilometer or so away. She turned and looked back up the veritable mountain they had emerged from, and despite the near-limitless possibilities granted her by the Force, she still found it difficult that she had covered such a distance in so little time. She looked at her oxygen levels again, then refocused her mind on the task of returning to Point Nadir, for they had little time or oxygen left to dawdle. "We can fly when we need to. Now, we should probably get moving before all this talking and flying runs us out of air."

"Great point. While walking across the surface of a comet has always been one of my life aspirations, I can't say suffocating in a vacsuit ranks as high."

The two of them began to hurry toward the scar of darkness slashed into the comet, the enormous esophagus known as the Jackrab Hole, inviting them into its depths even as the falling percentage of their oxygen meters motivated their flight. The low gravity turned their desperate run into a series of long leaps and short periods of gliding, Foyi alternating which of her feet she pushed off from the surface. They leapt over ridges and fissures, wending their way between fields of geysers that erupted with jets of vapor spiraling out into space. More than once, both Foyi and Rayf had to call on the Force to avoid floating too far from the surface, and their enhanced senses warned them seconds before a large sheet of ice and loose stone beneath their feet swelled and broke away from the comet's mass. Foyi's feet seemed to find slabs of ice and boulders with which she could gain purchase, before pushing off from them to land on the surface again, past the sudden tear in the ground. She cast a glance back to see the shards of rock and ice spinning away into the void, just another small portion of the comet being sheared off to join the tail that trailed Resh 9376 across its interstellar voyage. Rayf was still in midair, having sailed off a slab of ice the size of a landspeeder, before turning a slow, graceful flip and landing on his feet beside her, having used the Force to draw his errant body back to the ground. He tossed her a rakish grin but continued past her in another great bound. She could feel his Force presence shining brilliantly, like another star emerging in the infinite sea of darkness, and she could only shake her head in a combination of admiration and exasperation at the fact that he was thoroughly enjoying their spacewalk. _At least someone is._

Another field of treacherous ice and loose stones later, and they found themselves drifting to a stop at the very edge of the great cavern the locals of Point Nadir had named the Jackrab Hole. She had thought the hole in the side of the comet large when she had witnessed it through the _Flamusfracta_ 's viewports, but standing at the very edge, looking down into the darkness like the mouth of a great exogorth, she felt small and queasy just thinking about falling down into its depths. She knew the hole to be about five hundred meters across, but it was only now that she could appreciate the size of the expanse. She braced her palms on her knees as she bent forward, straining her eyes to see any details within the cavern and the tunnel she knew to lead into Point Nadir proper, but the darkness was too complete. Rayf landed a few moments after her, then carefully tiptoed to the edge and looked down into it with her. Her comlink crackled with his voice. "You ready? We've still got quite a ways to go..."

Foyi let out a slow, calming exhalation. "I don't see that we have much of a choice." And without further word, she stepped off the edge and began a lengthy plummet into the total darkness beyond. Her helmet lights were mere beams of dust-choked light in the blackness surrounding her, not having the power to shine far enough to illuminate a wall or stone outcropping or piece of space debris. She was floating into oblivion, knowing that she must be falling toward one of the tunnel's sides, but not receiving the sensation of actually moving. For all she knew, she could be hanging midair, trapped in the void, doomed to hang motionless until her oxygen was exhausted and she finally gained a brief modicum of motion with her frantic death throes. Despite the apprehension she felt at not knowing whether she was moving or where the contours of the tunnel were in relation to her, Foyi found herself sinking beneath the calming sea that was the Force. She felt deeper into its depths, the depths that were within her, and found the calm and relaxing center she so yearned for. She let the isolation, the sensation of weightlessness, insignificance, pure nothingness reinforce that center, flow into it, merge with it, and finally spread throughout every fiber of her being. Images of Tama being kidnapped, of Ak-vir's snarling smirk, of Lido's bruised and bloodied face swam past her conscious self, but as soon as they arose, she let them go, letting the waters of the Force carry them far and away. Each image, each memory, each emotion she had felt since Tama's kidnapping, both those she had expressed and those she had suppressed beneath her skin finally washed away, leaving just her. Just Foyi, and the Force.

Foyi gave a sigh of relief that she heard not, but felt as the molecules of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other gases fled her lungs and those of oxygen slid back in to refresh them. Her mind was barely attached to her physical form anymore, instead reaching out to encompass the space around her, to reach out and see her environment how it truly was, in both a physical sense and a spiritual one. The contours of the tunnel began to form around her; she could not see them, but she could feel them. She could feel her body mass displacing the dark matter of the void around her, could feel the particles of ice and dust bouncing off the rough protective layers of her envirosuit. She was still moving under the influence of her inertia as well as the comet's invisible grip on her form, drawing her toward a side of the tunnel that fluctuated in random ridges and outcroppings. The carcass of an unidentifiable starship arose in her awareness, one of its mangled wings rising up like a blade, directly in her path. She pushed away from it with a gentle eddy in the Force, and she felt her body drift through the darkness. She never drew close enough to that starship to touch it, but she felt the distance grow between her and it just as certainly as she would have felt it if she had passed a living being. More wreckage emerged in her consciousness, spinning languidly through the void, not unlike her. She drew up into a fetal position and pushed with the Force, and she spun slowly beneath the shrapnel of hull plating, passing within a hairsbreadth of its razor-sharp edge but remaining unharmed.

Foyi finally sensed the sides of the tunnel rising up to meet her, and she stretched her body out, letting her limbs dangle free and loose. Gravity and her momentum carried her against the rock face, where she impacted with barely any pain of contact, bracing herself on her palms and the toes of her boots. Foyi opened her eyes to see her helmet lights creating a pair of vaguely circular splashes of silver across a floor that appeared to have been rubbed smooth, as if by hundreds of years of raging waters coursing through the comet's depths, though she doubted this was the case. She brought herself to her knees, then instinctively looked above her, her lights framing the form of Rayf, who was just settling softly in the dust a few meters behind her. He landed on his feet, then patted himself down, checking for rents or tears in his vacsuit. Finding none, he strode toward her. Above and behind them was a hole in the darkness, framing a vague circle of black sprinkled with stars, already hundreds of meters away. Rayf drew up beside her and gave her an encouraging pat on the oxygen pack strapped to her back. "Well, that was fun."

"You're enjoying this way too much."

"I'm operating on about eleven percent oxygen now. My brain might be starving."

"I hope 'brain damage' won't be your excuse for any of your antics in the future. 'Cause as excuses go, it's pretty lame, no matter how accurate."

Rayf scoffed as the two of them continued their loping, bounding walk forward, deeper into darkness only partially illuminated by the dim lights effused from their helmets, the beams sparkling as they glinted off the refractory surfaces of ice particles revolving through the black space. "Hey, gimme a break. Not all of us can have extra brains dangling off the back of our heads. I've only got the one brain I can sustain damage to..."

Foyi checked the oxygen readout on her HUD, which was dropping dangerously close to ten percent. Neither one of them should be wasting their precious time and oxygen talking and jesting, though if they could not make it to the Slips in time, it probably would not matter if they wasted their last few precious breaths in camaraderie instead of suffocating gasps. "You know, for someone who has been in tutelage to illustrious Jedi Masters and Matukai Adepts, you are woefully ignorant."

"It's probably the brain damage."

Foyi cut her laughter short as they continued their trek through the long, winding dark. Her movements felt as though she had become detached from her body, her mind still surfing the cool waters of the Force. She was barely using the lights on her helmet, hardly relied on her eyes at all, for she could still feel the contours of the tunnel, hundreds of meters around her on all sides, as well as the rocky protrusions, terrain hazards, and wreckage from starships that rose in her way, or spun languidly upon their own inertia, sometimes coming close enough to her that she had to readjust her own inertial flights and leaps to avoid them. And she could feel Rayf, keeping easy pace with her, his breathing shallow and controlled as it whispered through the comm channel they shared, calling upon the Force and his Matukai training to keep his oxygen intake even and conservative. They said little more to each other as they crested ridges, maneuvered around debris and wreckage, and utilized the low gravitational pull of Resh 9376 to their advantage to propel them hundreds of meters in a single bound, so as to cover the winding and twisting length of the Jackrab Hole in as little time as possible.

Foyi had not realized she had settled into such a comfortable rhythm of sightless forward momentum, letting the currents of the Force be her guide, pulling her forward like the insatiable grasp of an undertow, until Rayf snapped her out of it with words over the comlink, words she did not discern. She opened her eyes, though it did little for her sight, for the interior of her helmet's viewscreen had mostly fogged over due to the predominance of carbon dioxide suffusing the interior of her suit. Her HUD told her she had about five percent oxygen left...no, make that four, but she risked speaking anyway. "What was that?"

Rayf ignored her, for he was speaking with someone else, having connected his comlink to another channel and an unknown receiver. "No, I ain't jerkin' your choobies, man. My cousin and I took a wrong turn out the Slips, and now we're stuck down at the bottom of Fische's Cove, right beneath your green butt. So why don't you do what you say you do, and send a taxi down to get us?"

Foyi craned her neck up as far as the hermetic seals on her helmet would allow her, and through the scuffed, marked, and fogged glass of the helmet, she could see intermittent rows of flashing lights far above her, some stationary, and others moving, describing the contours of docking umbilicals, cargo conveyor belts, hangars protruding from walls, and flying vessels, some small as skiffs, others large as freighters and heavy transports. She blinked again, hardly believing they had already emerged from the grandiose length and winding turns of the Jackrab Hole; if she remembered correctly what Rayf had told her regarding the geometry of Point Nadir, they were now in the cavernous opening known as Fische's Cove, standing on its rough floor of stone and ice, probably somewhere below the haphazard docking facilities known as the Tethers. She gave a short exhalation of breath as her readout dropped to three percent, and she had to admit, she was becoming lightheaded and unsteady on her feet. Almost unconsciously, she called upon the Force, asking it to still her breathing to fill her lungs with oxygen, to keep her awake and alive for just a little longer.

Foyi heard the crackle of an alien voice on the comm channel, its buzzing, burbling words sounding suspiciously like Rodese, though she was only familiar with the language in her ability to identify it. Rayf waited for the response, then replied in an exasperated and irritated tone, "Of course we'll pay. Just get down here; we're right by the entrance to the Jackrab Hole. A human and a Twi'lek in vacsuits...you can't miss us." He waited as whoever he was speaking with gave another babbling retort, and he sighed again. "Absolutely we're cousins. Didn't I say that already? Don't be a nerfherder; just _get down here_."

There was a click on the comlink, and Rayf gave another sigh, born more of exasperation than desperation or difficulty breathing. Foyi drew in a shuddering breath and whispered, "Who...who was that?"

"Just a guy that runs one of the many taxi services from the Tethers to the Souk. I've had to hitch a few rides with him on some of my previous visits, before my connections with Epsis got me preferential docking in the Slips and I stopped having to deal with all this sithspit, though I doubt he remembers. He was the first guy I thought of, 'cause he's reliable and rather cheap. He'll be along in a few moments and then we can get back to the Slips."

Rayf's confidence in the mysterious shuttle pilot turned out to be well-placed, though his arrival was right down to the wire, as Foyi's oxygen readout claimed she had but a little more than one percent of oxygen left in her tank. She could not hear the approach of the boxy, inelegant, and puttering hoverbus that descended from on high to save them from the fate of oxygen starvation, but she saw its lights as they drew closer, the enclosed speeder wheeling downward in a spiral to hover almost a meter off the dusty, icy floor before them. The hoverbus looked to have been meant for atmospheric use originally, but had gone extensive retrofits to include a small airlock where its door had once existed, so that it could be hooked to the airlocks of spaceworthy vessels and the myriad umbilicals and gantries of the Tethers without exposing the interior to the hard vacuum of space. Rayf proceeded through that oblong and protruding airlock without hesitation, and Foyi followed, her pulse quickening as the airlock cycled behind them and finally let them into the interior of the craft. The hoverbus' rows of torn, grimy seats stretched back before them, none of them occupied save for the pilot's chair, in which sat a Rodian man of indeterminate age, dressed in his own vacsuit, should the vessel suddenly be exposed to the void of space, his multifaceted eyes scrutinizing them as they came aboard. Rayf easily removed his helmet and gave a small sigh of contentment upon filling his lungs with the fetid, heavily-recycled air of the vessel, but Foyi's desperation to be out of her suit and her inexperience with such devices made her clumsy, proving difficult for her to remove her helmet, so Rayf reached over and popped the seals free. Foyi pulled the uncomfortable helmet free of her head and the seals about her neck and heaved a desperate gasp, while twitching her _lekku_ intermittently as she tried to work out the itchy pressure on her appendages imposed by the confines of the helmet. She felt tired, the events of the day and the stress she had suppressed finally starting to catch up to her, and she gratefully dropped into one of the seats near the front of the craft. The Rodian gave her a skeptical glare, then jabbered something at Rayf, who dropped into the seat next to Foyi with a chuckle born of remaining alive. He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "Yeah, yeah, I'll pay you when you take us to the Slips. Can't exactly pull my credit chip when I'm still in this vacsuit, now can I?"

That seemed to satisfy their Rodian pilot, who opened the throttle on the hoverbus and angled the vessel upward, ascending back into the upper reaches of Fische's Cove, curving in a great midair arc toward the rows of lights outlining the well-kept hangars of the Slips. Rayf nudged Foyi's shoulder with his fist, a boyish grin on his face. "Told ya we'd make it, cousin."

Foyi was too tired to validate his smugness with a response, so she merely shook her head and smiled, enjoying the simple act of breathing again.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Foyi awoke with a start, nearly falling out of the seat she had slumped in response to a cacophonous _bang_ that startled her from her slumber. She blinked sleep from bleary eyes to see Rayf standing before the dejarik table she had propped her heels upon, pouring a dark liquid from a carafe into a pair of cups on a tray. It was the tray that he had slapped against the dejarik table's surface, purposefully creating a noise loud enough to rouse her. Steam rose in billowing clouds from the cups, trailing after his movements as he offered one of the cups to her, still displaying that wry grin on his face. Foyi took it with detached and automatic responses, briefly sniffing the aroma wafting from the cup, which was already making her more aware by its smell alone. It was a large mug of caf, and she felt her stomach growling in anticipation as a response to the aroma.

Rayf set a few more containers on the tray with more caution and less noise, then peered at her. "I'm sure you could use some more sleep, though I figured you would prefer to get moving and doing something that might get us closer to your sister, so I figured a nice cup of caf would keep you starry-eyed. Do you take cream or sugar with yours?"

Foyi did not respond as she brought the mug to her lips and consumed the entirety of its contents, the liquid hot enough to bring out sweat on her forehead, but not so hot that she scalded her tongue or the back of her throat. Rayf's grin fell as he watched her drink the entire cup, then place it back on the table, silently bidding him to pour more. She absentmindedly licked her lips and replied in a sleep-slurred voice, "Both would be nice." She sighed in contentment, rubbing her eyes in an attempt to awaken further. She had only meant to sit down and rest, take a few minutes to recenter herself, collect her thoughts, perhaps even spend a little time in meditation. Falling asleep had been an unintentional consequence of the injuries, pain, and stress of the last week or so; she could not remember the last time she had even truly slept, and a part of her lamented that she had to refrain from further lapses of judgment, as neither she nor Tama had the time for such a luxury. "I don't remember the last time I had a decent cup of caf. Yanibar isn't resplendent with niceties and nonessentials..."

Rayf poured more caf into her cup, then began spooning cream and sugar into its dark depths, looking at her for confirmation on when he might stop, but when she said nothing, he shrugged and stopped when the liquid within had become so pale it was nearly white. Foyi accepted the new cup with a grateful twitch of her _lekku_ , remembered that Rayf probably could not read such nonverbal communication, and gasped, "Thanks," between gulps of caf.

Rayf watched her with a mixture of concern and interest, slowly stirring in a minute amount of cream in his own caf, then taking a small sip, enjoying the comforting heat and delicious taste of the liquid. They were both in the main hold of the _Flamusfracta_ , having shed the vacsuits they had arrived in after Rayf had retrieved his credit chip and paid the Rodian taxi pilot for delivering them back to the docking bay in which Rayf's ship was housed. They had taken refuge in the ship, more to enjoy breathing somewhat clean air again and collect their thoughts than anything else, not bothering with peeling off the sweat-soaked layers of clothes they still wore. The blaster rifle Rayf had stolen from one of Vri or Sura's goons had been discarded on one of the seats in the room, while Foyi's disruptor rifle leaned against the dejarik table where she had placed it with respect, due to the volatile and astounding nature of the weapon. She had managed to peel off most of her Zeison Sha armor, though she had to admit she felt less protected, almost naked, without it, and her hands itched to feel the familiar curves, edges, and weight of her discblade. While she was not particularly comfortable slumping in the seat in her sweat-stained garments, she was simply too tired to care, grateful to have survived yet another near catastrophe in a long line of such occurrences since she had set out from Yanibar to rescue her sister.

"Foyi, would you like to take that caf intravenously? Or maybe I can soak a bacta patch with caf and just plaster a few of those on your back?"

Foyi took a moment to breathe from her fervent attempts to inhale the caf that had been given her. She thought about humoring him with a chuckle, but was too tired to even manage that. "Perhaps both. It would certainly be more efficient; we have to keep moving. We have a fraction of a lead on Tama's location, but we need to act on it soon, else this turns into another wild bantha chase, or someone else captures us for some random and nefarious purpose."

Rayf sighed in exasperation. "What we need to do is take a breather, Foyi. I'll be the first to admit that even I need to regain my breath after choking on carbon dioxide-saturated filters for the past few hours, and I know you need it too, no matter how much you're trying to convince me you're ready for lightspeed again."

Foyi gave him a glare, but could not hold onto her ire. He was correct, as usual, though she felt she had no choice but to continue at breakneck pace. Tama was counting on her. She finished the rest of her caf in a single gulp, then leapt to her feet to begin determined, revolving pacing about her chair and the gameboard. "You're right...we could use a breather. But Tama isn't getting a breather, and I doubt whoever the kriff this 'Shepherd' is isn't taking one either. We need to get to Yuelo, and find out whatever he knows about the Shepherd and whatever sick child slavery racket the two of them are running."

Rayf set his caf down and folded his arms, not removing himself from his seat. "And how do you propose we get Yuelo to cough up any information on one of his business partners?"

Foyi threw her hands up in the air in a helpless gesture. "I'm open to suggestions; you're the one who has more experience with Hutts and the kajidics."

Rayf gave her a dubious glance. "I'm not sure whether I should take that as an acknowledgment of my superior experience, or an insult."

Foyi ignored his consternation, continuing with a flurry of ideas. "Can we make a deal with him? Even talk to him?"

Rayf snorted. "Not likely. After causing all that ruckus in his pub, he's more likely to flay us alive and make a nice scarf out of your headtails than sit down and have a civilized conversation with us. As far as a deal, anything we offer would probably require a cargo hold's worth of credits we don't have, and maybe an eye or a couple fingers, if he's feeling particularly lenient. Contrary to popular belief, Hutts don't just backstab all their partners in crime and business unless they have far greater incentive to do so, and even then, they're going to be considering all the angles before they act. We would need to offer him a deal he just can't refuse if we want to take that route."

Foyi put her chin in hand, considering his words, wracking her brain for ideas of how to get the required information from Yuelo's grasp. She had little in the way of credits or material possessions, and though Rayf seemed better off in these areas than she, she had seen nothing to indicate that he was swimming in material goods and affluent wealth. She paced back and forth, her eyes falling upon the disruptor rifle and the blaster she had Rayf had acquired from their captors, weapons they had been forced to procure as temporary replacements for their preferred weapons. And as she stared at the rifles, a sudden memory surfaced in the forefront of her stimulated mind, and she snapped her fingers in excitement. "Did Sura ever reactivate the security system on his warehouse before we all left for the Mines?"

Rayf considered the question for a moment, reviewing his own memory. "I'm not sure," he mused. "I wasn't really paying attention; I was a little busy trying not to bang my head on the doorway as those mercs shoved me in that repulsortruck. Not to mention falling off shelves and tangling with pit droids." He scrutinized her, uncertain of how her question pertained to the conundrum at hand. "What're you thinking?"

"Sura had a fairly sizable warehouse; you think he had anything of value in there?"

Rayf reviewed his memories again. "Well, what I saw was mostly junk, spare parts, and slag, but I wasn't exactly auditing the place. I suppose there was probably plenty of valuables in all those sealed crates and cargo cylinders." A sly smile curved his lips. "Though there might have been enough there for an enterprising Hutt like our good friend Yuelo to fix his bar and turn a profit besides."

Foyi grinned as he caught onto the plan she was proposing. "Assuming our 'good friend' is willing to talk to us, he might be interested in a warehouse no one's around to reclaim. Especially one that contains databanks on everything Vri and Sura collected on finding Fische's Legacy. Not only would he get all that salvage and product stored there, but his thugs might be the ones to actually find the treasure, what with the headstart Sura and Vri granted them. And I doubt that Yuelo would be pleased to learn one of his chief lieutenants had his own quick score scheme on the side without cutting him into the expedition's potential profits. Assuming, of course, he's willing to talk to us."

Rayf scratched the stiff hairs adorning his chin and jaw with a grin. "He may want to feed us to vornskrs, but I've never heard of a Hutt who would turn down the prospect of free profit over a grudge."

"Will it be enough, though? Would Yuelo sell out the Shepherd for a warehouse full of parts and the promise of treasure that may or may not exist?"

Rayf shrugged. "We won't know until we try, at least. Assuming we can get past the turrets and security systems that may or may not be armed."

"The security systems that we bypassed last time with relative ease," came Foyi's response. "If nothing else, I heard someone has some technical aptitude who I'm certain has been itching to show off ever since he told me about it."

Rayf gave a self-conscious grin, then took a lengthy swig of his caf. Then he stood, stretching his sore and tired muscles. "Well, I would like to get my wan-shen back, if I could."

"You mean that stick you take out your failed Jedi frustrations on people's skulls with?"

"Says the girl who lobs a glorified datadisk at those who anger her."

Foyi grinned in mock hostility, also levering herself out of the seat with a lengthy stretch. "Perhaps you shouldn't anger me, then, hm?"

"I'll take that under advisement when we retrieve our respective 'sticks' and 'datadisks'."

* * *

Rayf and Foyi moved through the streets, alleys, and passages of the Trade District with quick and stealthy movements, though few passerby actually paid attention to the human and Twi'lek as they passed between storefronts and narrow alleys. Foyi found this fortuitous, signifying that as of yet, she and Rayf had not angered anyone powerful enough to place an alert or bounty upon their heads that would prevent them from showing their faces in public without taking a blaster bolt to those same visages. Rayf remarked in a low tone that this probably meant that Vri and Sura's expedition had gone unnoticed by Zietta and the ruling Anjiliac Clan, who were the ones that had placed the ban on entering the Mines in the first place, and would have set much of Point Nadir into an uproar if the Hutt found out such a large party of treasure hunters had violated her decrees. Particularly considering one of the primary orchestrators of the aforementioned scheme officially worked for the Anjiliac kajidic; Rayf further expounded that even if Vri, Sura, or some of their men had survived the Nadir spiders and found their way back through the winding maze that was the Mines, they would probably be laying low for awhile, or even looking to get off Resh 9376 as soon as possible. Thus, he surmised it was unlikely the pair would have to deal with Vri, Sura, or their ilk anytime in the near future.

Foyi took little comfort from his hypothesis, for this was all it truly was. Rayf knew the composition of the situation they would be walking into more than she did. She was merely grateful to see that what few groups of Anjiliac thugs were wandering the streets did not appear to be looking for them, and there were none of the dark combat armor and green cloaks of the Sable Dawn anywhere in sight. Not that that gave her any sense of security, as the pair of assassins that had stunned her and Rayf had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, despite the Force sensitivity of their quarry. Such thoughts let a deep sense of paranoia settle into her consciousness, and she could not help but keep her head swiveling atop her neck, her eyes and Force senses probing every shadow, dim corner, and being they passed, no matter how innocuous they appeared.

Having found Sura's warehouse with the help of Xan's map beforehand, the pair retraced the route from memory, until they found the same squat building of permacrete and durasteel, autoturrets hanging and swiveling from the overhang about its roof. Carbon scoring and black marks spattered the stone floor around the warehouse, the evidence of Foyi's diversion and the inherent excitability of Sura's security system displayed across the ground, garbage littered about the warehouse, and blaster scars across nearby buildings. The lights along the curved outer chassis of each automated heavy blaster were blinking red, signifying the autoturrets were active and searching for targets who dared to violate the sanctity of that which they protected. The heavy blast doors that were the only apparent ground entrance to the building were sealed tight, though Foyi could not see any other security measures from this angle. She crouched beside Rayf and concentrated, reaching out with her feelings, her perceptions beyond her own body, and let herself sink into the cool, undulating waters of the Force, barely breaking the surface, stretching out just enough to sense other presences past the doors of Sura's warehouse. She sent a probing tendril forth, careful to keep it narrow and focused, so as not to alert the questing senses of the Sable Dawn or any other hostile Force-sensitives that may be on this rock. Belatedly, she realized that Point Nadir may actually be a place for Force-users such as herself, her sister, and other Zeison Sha to escape the notice of the Empire.

Foyi refocused her thoughts, concentrated, and sent the current of Force energy past the building's walls, imagining what the interior of the sizable warehouse must look like, dredging up a mental map from what she remembered when she had been in there. She felt no sentient presences, no matter how hard she concentrated, though there were a few small lights of consciousness floating on the very surface of the sea that was the Force, belonging to the primal instincts and sensations of animals. One seemed vaguely familiar, and she wondered if it belonged to the gizka that had caused them so much trouble when they had originally sneaked into the warehouse's interior, but beyond that, she felt no lingering malice or hostility within the edifice. It was empty for now, and perhaps would remain so as long as she and Rayf wished to use it, as long as Sho Sura and his Ganks had been unsuccessful in navigating the tunnels of the Mines or avoiding the acid-spitting monsters lurking in the depths of the asteroid.

Foyi withdrew into herself again, then turned to Rayf, who similarly seemed to be regaining present awareness, having been immersing himself in the Force for similar purposes as Foyi's exterior analysis. He bit his bottom lip in thought as he stared at the threatening autoturrets. "As far as I can tell, there's no one home."

"Except for your gizka friend," Foyi replied with some confidence.

Rayf grimaced at that. "That little _sleemo_ better steer clear of me if he knows what's good for him..."

"Assuming we can get back inside."

Rayf nodded, scratching absentmindedly at the hairs on his chin. "That's the problem. I don't think we should try the tactic we did last time; we're likely to get a bunch of passerby killed, and would cause undue attention to the warehouse when it would be better that we get back in as quietly as possible."

Foyi considered the problem, her eyes roving over the contours of the building, its sharp corners and foreboding lines bristling with the implied threat of the autoturrets' cannons; there were only a pair of the machines for each side of the building, but their range of motion was wide enough so as to cover each other's sweeping movements, so that anyone approaching the edifice would be caught in a crossfire between two turrets at minimum. Her _tchun_ curled about her neck in a calming gesture, as if the appendage was trying to grant her comfort for the difficulties ahead. She could feel Rayf's eyes on her, studying her contemplative expression and awaiting an idea on how to proceed. Foyi ignored his regard and let herself become submerged with the Force, its waters swirling down around her and through her, suffusing her body with supernatural power simply waiting to be harnessed and unleashed. Her eyes snapped open, and she sprang free of the alley in which they were hiding, emerging from the shadows in a sprint that was augmented by the Force, so that an observer would likely only see her as a momentary blur of indistinguishable and amorphous form. The warehouses and soaring cavern walls of the Trade District stretched into indistinct lines around her as Sura's warehouse was suddenly only meters away, and then less than a meter, the blast doors appearing to jump toward her and meet her charge with unyielding durasteel. But she did not run straight into the blast doors, gathering the Force about her, shunting its limitless power to her legs and feet as she used her increased speed to provide momentum for her leap to the warehouse's roof. The Force-augmented jump sent her airborne, and for the briefest of moments, she hung in midair, the roofs of stores and warehouses stretching out around and beneath her in a convocation of architecture amongst the pressing weight of the jagged ceiling above. And then the toes of her boots struck the flat surface of the roof, and she tucked her body into a roll that fetched her up against one of the air circulation modules protruding like metallic tumors from the warehouse's roof with a noise loud enough to make her cringe. She scrambled to her knees and palms, gasping for air, quivering from the exertion of calling so deeply upon the Force in her already exhausted state. She scrambled to her feet, then crept to the edge of the roof, gazing across the street at Rayf, who was still crouching within the alley and trying determinedly to keep an impressed expression off his face. She then peered over the lip describing the perimeter of the warehouse's roof, her _lekku_ dangling to either side of her head, and could just barely see the tips of the autoturrets' barrels languidly swinging back and forth; she could hear an incensed beeping noise from them as their alert status had been increased, undoubtedly from the brief glimpse of movement their sensors had been able to pick up from her Force sprint, but seeing no active targets, had yet to fire.

Foyi looked back to Rayf, who seemed as though he was readying himself to attempt something similar, but he halted when she sent a tendril of warning through the Force, the briefest brush of minds that advised him to remain still for a moment. The autoturrets had not fired yet, and neither had they locked onto any potential foes, but they were in a heightened state of awareness.. Foyi could feel Rayf's eyes on her, expectant and bewildered, but she did not meet his gaze, instead closing her own eyes and concentrating again. She drew deeply of the waters of the Force, as if slaking her thirst after far too long in the Yanibarran summer sun, and stretched out with her hands, the physical representation of her mind reaching through the Force. She felt Rayf's presence almost immediately, but focused not on his mind or spiritual essence, but rather on his material form, becoming intimately familiar with it, knowing almost every rumple of clothing, nearly every hair and imperfection of his skin. Rayf could feel her probing presence, and responded with further confusion she could feel on the surface of her subconscious; she ignored his uncertainty, looking past him and continuing to scrutinize his physicality. She imagined him to be just another object in the environment, and she studied the ripples his body made in the Force by merely existing, how those ripples interacted and connected with the stone beneath his feet, the buildings between which he crouched, the enormity of Resh 9376 itself. Then, feeling confident she understood where and how Rayf was in relation to the rest of the asteroid and to her, her hands clenched into fists and the air between them warped and shuddered as the Force was brought to bear. She opened her eyes in time to see Rayf, his face twisted in abject surprise, suddenly flying through the air toward her, moving so quickly via the pulling power of the Force that her eyes perceived him only as a vaguely humanoid smudge whipping through the air. Little more than a second later, Rayf came flying bodily past her, where he tumbled across the warehouse's roof until he slowed his momentum with flailing limbs, eliciting a hasty curse as he tried to slow himself enough to get back to his feet and retain some measure of dignity. Foyi let out the breath she had been holding without knowing she had and gave a great, shuddering gasp, letting her mind divorce itself of the exhaustive and heady power of the Force in order to regain some of her physical energy. She slumped back on the roof, heaving and gasping as lethargy and overextension settled into her body; being a Zeison Sha Warrior, her command of the telekinetic aspects of the Force was impeccable, but it was still tiring to call upon the Force so completely and in so many overt means with such frequency.

Rayf walked up to her, then dropped into a crouch. His breathing was slightly erratic as he attempted to still his body's natural reaction to a sudden and frightening situation. He grinned down at her prone form, admiration evident in his gaze. "Okay. I'm sufficiently impressed now, Foyi. You don't have to keep showing off for my benefit."

Foyi groaned as she sat up, rubbing her aching muscles and squinting through the haze of exhaustion placed upon her by events and the overwhelming nature of the Force. She bent forward, peering between her knees and craning her neck to see past the roof's overhang, to see the tips of the autoturrets' blasters still swinging back and forth. She could hear the furious beeping they made in their alerted state, as if the machines somehow knew that there were intruders sneaking past their guard, but had neither the range of motion nor the sensors to find them. Foyi pushed off the roof's flat surface and into a crouch, looking over her shoulder at Rayf with a dubious expression. "You know, Rayf, the whole galaxy doesn't revolve around you."

Rayf looked around at all the rooftops, the people walking through alleys and along streets, the landspeeders zipping through the streets carrying passengers, cargo, or both. He glanced over the edge of the roof, then replied with a grin, "From here, it certainly looks like it does."

Foyi groaned in consternation as she crept toward the same ventilation access she and Rayf had used to sneak into Sura's warehouse the last time. "If you're going to talk so incessantly, perhaps you could show a little gratitude for not getting vaped, laserbrain."

As she opened the vent access, Rayf sidled up beside her, the grin still plastered to his face. "Thanks for bodily throwing me through the air across the field of fire of twitchy autoturrets without warning me first, sweetheart. I greatly appreciate being dumped on my ass by the Force without my consent. I now owe you a lifedebt, and will follow you for the rest of your days."

"Oh stars, spare me," Foyi retorted as the vent panel opened with a tinny squeal of metal. She clambered inside before Rayf could say something more infuriating or sarcastic, and the Matukai followed shortly after. The pair quickly scrambled through the claustrophobic ventilation passages, passing intersections and winding around corners until they found the grating on the floor of the tunnel that they had used previously, dropping onto the top of the tall shelving they had used as an observation perch when first entering Sura's warehouse. Little had been disturbed since they had been taken away from the warehouse, with several crates, starship and droid parts, and parcels of unknown materials scattered over the area where Rayf had fallen after his unfortunate encounter with the gizka. Amidst this pile sat the deactivated DUM-series pit droid, having been retracted into its inert and folded state.

Foyi dropped from the top of the shelf, letting the Force absorb most of the impact that would have at very least sprained her legs and ankles caused by falling from such a height. She kicked aside a case of hydrospanners, then reached out with the Force, pushing her mind past her body until she felt the familiar presence of her lost weapon, a tangible light in the Force for her, as it had been crafted as an extension of herself and her abilities. She stretched out a hand, and the discblade came whirling out of the darkness, emerging from beneath one of the shelves where it had bounced and rolled after she had dropped it earlier. She gave a sigh of relief as she held the weapon in her hand again, using her free hand to caress the soft wrappings of its handle, the wicked curves of the blades radiating out from the circumference of its outermost metallic circle. She reached behind her and slipped the discblade back into its holster, and for the first time in the last several hours, she felt complete again, even for only a moment when her thoughts inevitably turned back to Tama and whatever plight she may be suffering. She looked up as a ripple of air currents disturbed her reverie, and saw Rayf grin as his wan-shen returned to his hand, where he hefted the weapon lovingly, putting it through a few practice spins and swings, like he was reacquainting himself with the staff weapon through some esoteric ritual to which she was not privy.

Foyi walked past him to the bank of terminals, screens, and holoprojectors set up on the far wall of the warehouse, at an angle from the pair of blast doors that allowed laborers and cargo to enter and exit the edifice. She tapped in a few commands, calling up an interface that would allow her to access the main functions of the warehouse, but was stalled when the security subroutines she wished to access prompted her for access codes. She glanced back over her shoulder to see Rayf still tossing his wan-shen about, then interrupted him irritably, "Hey, if you're done playing with your joystick there, I could use those tech specialist skills you claim to have over here."

Rayf appeared too happy to be reunited with his weapon to be perturbed by her crass remark, pulling the wan-shen to pieces in a flurry of motion that still dazzled the Twi'lek's eyes, despite having seen him do so multiple times already, and in combat no less. By the time his rakish swagger had carried him to the semicircle of computer banks, he had already replaced the multiple pieces of the traditional Matukai weapon on his belt and back. He stepped past her, one of his hands reaching out to gently push her aside, and began inputting commands. He pulled his datapad from a pouch on his belt, the haphazard shape and size of the device suggesting heavy modifications made for the purpose of slicing codes and computer systems of many varieties and levels of security. He plugged a jack from his datapad into Sura's bank of terminals, and started running codebreaking programs on his datapad, while slicing through the security subroutines on the terminals' interface. Foyi backed away to give him space to work, though she could not stop herself from pacing nearby, examining the contents of the overladen shelving and reading labels on some of the larger collections of crates. One of those crates claimed to contain packaged sweet-sand cookies, which instantly piqued her suspicions, so she tapped the release controls on the crate and peered inside to find rows of packages containing the aforementioned cookies, the colorful wrapping claiming they were an original recipe from the Wheel. Foyi picked up one of the packages, wondering if these confections had come from the same business owned by the angry and rotund Whiphid woman Pash had been delivering rolls and sweetcakes to. She dug through the crate, tossing packages aside as she excavated the bottom contents of the container, only to find it was packed full of cookies, as the label claimed. Frustrated, she pushed aside a few more packages, and found with a sense of accomplishment a tiny fracture in the bottom of the crate, a tab which when pushed to the side opened a hidden compartment in the bottom of the crate. Her hands disappeared into the darkness of the concealed compartment and came away with a package similar in size to those containing sweet-sand cookies, though the tough, silky paper wrapping it was opaque, preventing her from seeing its contents. The package was not labeled, save for numbers specifying its weight in kilograms, but she did not need labels to identify the substance housed within, for she had seen similar parcels in the hands of smugglers and addicts on Yanibar a few times before.

Rayf gave a cry of triumph as he broke through the encryption on Sura's terminals. "Foyi, this warehouse is _mine_...er, ours! It was difficult; Sura knew how to protect his things, I have to give the little blue guy that. But we don't need astromechs when Rayf Moors, Slicer Master, is on the job." He glanced back at her, probably to see if she was taking notice of the accomplishment he was so arrogantly expounding upon, and saw her still rummaging through the crate. "What'd you find?"

Foyi turned to him and held up the package wrapped in glossy paper. "I think I found something we can make a deal with."

Rayf's eyes opened comically wide as he saw the parcel, then trotted to her side and peered down into the crate's hidden chamber. He paused there for a moment, then opened another large crate beside it, pulling out several hyperdrive attenuators and a laser caliper before reaching down and popping the catch on the revealed compartment in its bottom. A moment later, he pulled a handful of packages wrapped in the same opaque paper and flimsiplast, his expression alternating between a grin of triumph and open-mouthed horror. Foyi peered at him expectantly, asking, "This _is_ what I think it is, right?"

"If you're thinking it's glitterstim," Rayf answered breathlessly, "then, yeah. _Spast_."

"If Yuelo's like any Hutt you've described so far, this would have to be a deal he can't refuse," Foyi surmised, hefting the package of glitterstim between her hands. Even on Yanibar, normally so far removed from the galaxy as a whole, glitterstim had been a rare and valuable commodity, usually found in the hands of smugglers that came through the spaceport, many of the stormtroopers and Imperial officers of the garrison being their greatest customers. Foyi had never experimented with the spice herself, but she had heard that it tended to produce temporary telepathic abilities in anyone who took a significant amount, whether they were Force-sensitive or not. The fact that it was harvested from spice spiders, reacted poorly from exposure to light, and was only produced in mass quantities in a handful of planets in the entire galaxy made it incredibly valuable and difficult to procure if someone did not have the right connections. Its value was only increased by the fact that most governments strictly controlled or simply outlawed its use, and the illegal transportation and sale of glitterstim and other illicit spices had made many criminal organizations like the Hutt kajidics and Black Sun exorbitantly wealthy, practically running the entire criminal underworld of the galaxy with the power given them by their competing interests and control of the spice markets.

Foyi began searching other crates and cargo cylinders, finding concealed containers within the bottoms or walls of an alarming number of them. Meanwhile, Rayf returned to the consoles and used his sliced access to bring up the warehouse's manifest, which listed in exacting detail the contents of every container, cargo cylinder, and crate stacked upon the shelves or against the back wall. Trusting in the security of his computer systems, Sura had not been shy about listing the actual contents of each container, not just the decoy objects and products, and according to the manifest, most of these containers contained at least a small amount of spice awaiting sale, everything from ryll to tempest to glitterstim. Apparently, Sura was well-connected, and most of these crates had already been purchased and were awaiting shipping or delivery to buyers all across the galaxy. Rayf turned to Foyi, who was busy replacing the contents of the crates they had ransacked. "There's enough spice here to make a Hutt drool uncontrollably, Foyi." He reconsidered that remark. "Well, drool even more than normal. Yuelo would have to be one spiteful son of a Sith harlot to pass up an opportunity like this just being dropped onto his tail like this." He glanced about the warehouse wistfully. "You know, we're sitting on a literal fortune here..."

Foyi replaced one of the packages of glitterstim in the crate labeled "Sweet-Sand Cookies", then turned to him, crossing her arms dubiously over her chest. "I don't really care, as long as it makes Yuelo greedy enough to give up what he knows about the Shepherd and allows me to rescue Tama. Besides, what would we do with all of this stuff? Sell it? Become the galaxy's greatest Force-sensitive spicerunners?"

Rayf shrugged. "We'd be unique; I doubt there's a lot of those running around." He looked down at the head of the wan-shen sheathed at his belt, like a dagger riding his hip, and sighed. "Though the Matukai have always held themselves to much higher standards by the very fact that we are able to sense and touch the Force. I'm certain the Zeison Sha are similar."

Foyi nodded. "None of my lessons ever mentioned whether it was 'forbidden' or not to be a glit-biter, though I'm sure it would be frowned upon. As long as these can be used to help us get to Tama, I don't give a flying mynock how many credits we're sitting on."

Rayf smirked and turned back to the terminals, inputting a few commands and codes, then finally pulling the jack of his datapad free of the terminal's port and replacing the device in the pouch reserved for it. "Well, I've reprogrammed the security system to recognize us as owners of the warehouse, and changed the access codes to all the doors and entry points, so if Sura or Vri do come back here, they're going to find it difficult to get in without the Force or high explosives. I also made a copy of the manifest and the holomap that Sura put together of the Mines, both of which I figure could be used to entice Yuelo into not nailing us to the wall upon seeing us again."

"You sound confident."

"Really? I'm a better actor than I thought."

Foyi thought of when they had first met in Baruk's Bar, then shook her head ruefully. "Not really, considering the display you put on when we first met."

"In my defense, I _was_ temporarily drunk, though I don't think the same could be said of you when you were groping that Houk."

Her expression grew fierce as she leveled a threatening finger at him. "Don't."

His grin was practically radiant. "Whatever you say, _muni_."

"I said 'don't', dammit!"

Rayf merely laughed as he turned and walked toward the blast doors, Foyi following after, feeling more than a little self-conscious.

* * *

The Nest had changed in subtle manners from the first time Foyi had visited, and she could not see any of these changes being positive or appealing. It was still a confusing warren of winding tunnels and haphazard chambers artificial and natural, as if it had originally been dug out by a hive of spice-crazed Killiks with no sense of unity or direction in their efforts. But now these walls were pockmarked with the scars of recent battle and directionless violence, blaster burns and carbon scoring accompanying graffiti made from the different colors of spilled bodily fluids and washes of splattered blood. The underlying sense of violent tension and incessant malice that had permeated the close, cloying air here had become an angry hum, a vibration at the edge of her Force-enhanced perceptions. Wanton violence, death, and destruction had occurred in these tunnels recently, resulting in the cessation of life for dozens, and while Foyi saw no bodies sprawled in the tunnels as she followed Rayf inexorably back toward the Cruelest Cut, the absence of such gave her no comfort. This was the portion of the shadowport frequented by the most violent, dangerous, and degenerate of spacers; for all she knew, the mercenaries, assassins, and bounty hunters here had eaten the corpses of those they had killed before their remains had gone cold. They passed few people as they wound their way through the labyrinth of cold and jagged stone, and Foyi made certain not to make eye contact with anyone they met, for everyone who ventured here had appendages close to blasters, vibroblades, or other weapons, and some carried their tools of death and violence openly, as if challenging all those they met to try and attack them. Foyi and Rayf gave those most hostile and suspicious of purveyors to the small businesses and waystations within the Nest a wide berth, and no one decided to accost them, making their passage tense but uneventful.

Foyi kept her glare on a pair of Trandoshans with Wookiee pelts and braids adorning their armor, carrying ACP Scatter Guns in their clawed grips, until they had turned a corner, grunting and growling to each other in private conversation. She caught up to Rayf, who continued to walk purposefully, exuding a confident and fierce personality that was almost a physical aura about him, and had served to deter more than one blaster-happy lunatic in the claustrophobic spaces they navigated. "What _happened_ here?" she whispered beside him, pointedly staring at a disturbing smear of blood splattered down one wall, in amidst a storm of blast points from laser weaponry.

"Remember that shootout we started at Yuelo's? Pretty much everyone in the Nest wants to shoot everyone else, so once someone starts shooting, _everyone_ starts shooting." He said this nonchalantly, as if the horrid occurrences within the Nest were merely a fact of life and existence itself, though Foyi could see the pain in the depths of his eyes, the slight grimace that tugged at the corners of his lips. He could feel the raw, ragged edges of the Force in this place, the omniscient energy field reacting to the pain, the rage, and the death that had occurred here.

The rest of their walk was accomplished in silence between them, and before long they found themselves before the open, unbarred doorway of the Cruelest Cut once more. Foyi was dazzled by the size of the tavern again as the pair carefully strode down the short flight of stairs onto the cantina's main floor. The atmosphere was still rife with the acrid stench of spice being consumed and burned in large quantities, smoke and vapors from more intoxicants than she could identify clogging her nostrils, forcing her to take shallow breaths through her mouth, which saved her somewhat from the more onerous odor of blood and burned ozone from overwhelming laserfire. The number of patrons arrayed around the dozens of tables were mostly spread out, small groups of individuals belonging to the same factions or mercenary companies keeping large distances between other similar groups, nursing drinks with one hand and fingering holstered blasters with the other. There were marks of carbon scoring on the walls, the floor, and the balconies ringing the upper tiers of the cantina. One of the observation platforms on the back wall had had all its viewports completely blown off their frames, signifying some sort of explosive event, or perhaps determined and sustained blasterfire from weapons far more powerful than normal blaster rifles and carbines. She could see faint smudges on some of the tables and spots on the floor where blood had pooled and been scrubbed clean. The din that had pervaded the Cruelest Cut's ambiance on her first visit came primarily from the screens on the back wall and the holoprojectors displaying bloodsports from around the galaxy; few of the patrons present spoke above a conspiratorial whisper. Only one scantily-clad Twi'lek stood behind the bar, and she offered no more than a weak and strained smile whenever someone came to the bar to refill their drink, which was not often. Foyi let her mind expand past her body, barely dipping her consciousness into the Force's eddying waves, and physically recoiled, the tension and implied threat so thick here, it was like a palpable layer of the atmosphere itself. No matter the level of violence that had occurred in the tunnels of the Nest, it had been the most heinous and vicious here, the epicenter of the raw, pulsing wounds that sent waves of pain and rage through the Force around her, with a ready and expectant air, as if those gathered were merely waiting for an excuse to begin blasting again.

As Rayf and Foyi began walking into the Cruelest Cut, acting as though they were merely another pair of patrons looking for a drink or to kill some time in front of one of the screens, they noticed that almost all eyes in the cantina were turning toward them. Foyi ducked her head, trying to look inconspicuous, while Rayf fixed his gaze on the bartender and the counter surrounding her, as though his only focus was getting himself something with which he might get inebriated on. Apparently, neither one of their attempts to remain innocuous was succeeding, for as they passed the nearest tables, those seated began to rise, drawing blasters. Foyi snuck a glance to either side of her and saw looks of malice, murder, and incredulity on the faces of almost every patron in the tavern, recognition glinting in their eyes. There was a disturbing number of Anjiliac insignias present on those gathered, either tattooed into their flesh or stenciled on their armor, and almost everyone carried multiple types of blaster weapons, several of them actively pointed at the human and Twi'lek walking across the bar's expanse. As they continued further into the Cruelest Cut's interior, those patrons who remained seated stood, unsheathing their weapons, some aiming at her vitals. Foyi itched to reach for her discblade or the disruptor rifle strapped across her back, but she could feel the bloodthirsty intentions of the patrons, and knew they were simply waiting for her or Rayf to make any sudden or hostile movements, barely restraining themselves from filling the air with lethal energy bolts.

Rayf still seemed unconcerned as he walked straight up to the bar and the Twi'lek woman stationed there, who was staring at him with a mixture of surprise, hostility, and begrudging respect. He leaned against the bar and Foyi stood beside him, keeping her hands at her sides, her stance loose, gathering the Force about her that she might spring into action at a moment's notice. The thugs were closing in now, hemming the pair in a cage of armored bodies, blaster barrels, and the cantina's bar. Rayf took a glance at all those suddenly standing so close, and gave a light chuckle. "I'm just ordering a drink, guys. Nothing stellar happening here."

The bartender laughed, a mirthless sound as she braced her elbows on the opposite side of the bar, her nose within mere centimeters of Rayf's own. "You and your _muni_ are either the bravest or most _stoopa koochoos_ I've ever laid eyes on. After what you pulled last time you were here, Yuelo's not gonna let you just walk away this time, _kung_."

Foyi leaned across the bar as well, dropping her ready stance; if the thugs decided to start shooting, there was not much she could do about it, even were she fully rested and truly one with the Force. "We're cousins, actually, and we've business with Yuelo."

The Twi'lek woman turned her disbelieving stare between both Rayf and Foyi, and Foyi could not determine whether the bartender was attempting to decide if Foyi spoke the truth, or was still discombobulated by the fact that the two responsible for such death and destruction had returned to the scene, where they would undoubtedly be killed. Rayf folded his hands atop the bar and continued Foyi's sentiment, saying in quiet tones, "We think Yuelo is going to want to know what we have to offer him. We're confident we can come to an arrangement that's beneficial for all involved."

The bartender scrutinized the human and Twi'lek companions, trying to discern whether they were serious or not, and was only greeted with the same, calm facades. Her eyes flicked to the thugs closest to Rayf and Foyi, and the two of them suddenly felt well over a dozen blaster barrels jammed into their sides and backs as the distinct sound of blasters being primed whined in the thick silence. The bartender's gaze grew hard as permacrete, and she barked orders to the companions in a voice as sharp as a vibroblade as several of the thugs and mercenaries stepped closer. " _Pasta mo rulya!_ " In response, both Foyi and Rayf spread their hands away from their bodies as the thugs grabbed Rayf's blaster rifle and Foyi's disruptor rifle, then began a thorough examination of their bodies through a jarring, rough pat-down involving far more hands than Foyi was comfortable with. She grimaced as a Kubaz's searching fingers found her discblade in its harness beneath her cloak and ripped it free, while a pair of Weequay busied themselves pulling all the pieces of Rayf's wan-shen from his belt and back. The bartender watched patiently as anything looking remotely like weapons were taken from them, and no less than two of Yuelo's thugs had firm grips upon their arms and shoulders, making certain neither Rayf nor Foyi could attempt anything untoward. She spoke directly to a Zygerrian who, based on the way the others seemed to defer to him, was one of the leaders of this group, with sharp demands, her voice brittle as carbonite ice. "Take them to Yuelo; he's been awaiting this meeting with great anticipation." She turned to Rayf and Foyi, granting them a sultry smile she usually reserved for her favorite customers. " _Bona nai kachu, sweets patogga. Kako kreespa._ "

"Not if Yuelo's as smart as I think he is", Rayf returned with a confident air, though Foyi could see his confidence was little more than an act. For her part, she said nothing, saving her strength and her ire for the approaching meeting with Yuelo. Foyi simply hoped that what she and Rayf had to offer would be enough to entice Yuelo into giving up what information he had regarding the Shepherd and Tama. The Hutt's thugs began roughly shoving her and Rayf forward, leading them in a rowdy cluster toward one of the narrow openings on the far wall of the cantina, denoting close tunnels curving off into other portions of Yuelo's establishment. At first, she believed the tunnel they all crammed and jostled their way through was the same passageway that led to the gladiator pit where she had nearly had her face ripped off by a Barabel, but the contours of this tunnel were much more jagged than the previous one had been, and it curved off in an opposing direction. It covered significantly more distance as well, and Foyi was just beginning to feel the oppressive sensations of claustrophobia and violation from the close confines and the sweating bodies rubbing against and jostling her when the tunnel suddenly opened up into a chamber nearly as large as the taproom of the Cruelest Cut. It was dimly lit by only a few glowstrips set into the stone walls and luma globes upon stands standing equidistantly throughout the room. The center of the room was dominated by a large cage of crisscrossing bars made from durasteel, with a single swinging door on one side and projectors along the floor and ceiling of the conveyance, able to create a force field or ray shield about its exterior. Nothing was presently in the cage, save for several smears and splashes of blood that glinted in the dim light, an epitaph to recent violence. More patrons and bodyguards ringed the outer edges of the room, either standing with weapons at the ready, or seated at small tables and booths eating, drinking, and exchanging a menagerie of currencies amongst themselves, paying and receiving bets. The air in the room was rife with celebratory attitudes, the aftermath of excitement induced by some sort of gladiatorial bout that Rayf and Foyi had arrived too late to witness. As they were shoved into the chamber, the taunts, jeers, cheers, and idle chatter began to fade into quiet murmurs and searing glares; apparently, the members of the audience were already well-acquainted with the previous actions of Foyi and Rayf in the cantina. They were shoved forward so abruptly they nearly lost their balance, and were practically dragged around the cage's perimeter to the far side of the room, whereupon a dais heaped with cushions, rugs, and blankets sat the enormous bulk of the Hutt known as Yuelo. He sat in a slumped and contented manner, his heavy-lidded eyes half-closed, as though the violent activities that had just occurred in the room were so banal and routine they were little more than a sleep aid to him. Arrayed around him were Houks and Nikto in piecemeal armor, blaster rifles and longblasters held across their chests. Standing behind and a little to the side of the Hutt was another large being, his arms crossed before a heaving and blood-spattered chest, his small eyes piercing with a determined and fell gaze upon all those who dared to meet his regard, as if he viewed all other sentients as mere objects, tools, or even prey. It took a moment for Foyi to recognize the species the creature belonged to, for she had never seen one of his kind before, but had heard of their immense strength and imposing presences from spacers' tales recounted to her by her sister. The creature was bipedal in structure, standing over two and a half meters high, covered in tiny scales of greenish-blue, taller than the largest Wookiee she had ever seen, and twice as wide in girth, his body bound with bulging cords of muscle. His humongous hands ended in fingers almost the size of her _lekku_ in width, encrusted with dried blood, his knuckles scraped and chafed from heavy punches. His enormous head sloped up to a bald scalp over a prominent brow, flanked by pointed ears like wings adorning the sides of his face, a flat bony plate where his nose would be were he human, his large gaping mouth filled with tiny, pointed teeth, save for the pair of lengthy incisors that protruded over his bottom lip. His only articles of clothing were a purple garment about his hips and thigh, bound around his waist by a gilt belt, while bands of gilded metal wrapped around his upper arms and wrists, the entire outfit appearing to be more akin to a costume than anything meant for modesty or protection. His gaze swept back and forth over the assembled crowd, then settled upon Foyi and Rayf with a glower of hatred, derived from the fact that they were simply alive. It was a Mandallian Giant, and based on the blood streaked across his sweating form, he appeared to be the winner of some contest of violence and ferocity that had just occurred in the cage so prominently displayed.

Foyi tore her gaze from the spectacle of the Mandallian Giant only reluctantly, for Yuelo's slitted eyes had opened wide into a vacuous, baleful gaze. She had expected to read fury in his reaction, or even perverse glee at seeing the pair that had caused him so much trouble in the last few days brought before him, unarmed and within the grasp of his minions. But what she saw was something that made her skin crawl, a cold, reptilian expression that was practically indecipherable. She felt as though she was reduced to a mere slab of meat in that gaze, and he was giving great consideration to whether he should eat her or not. She had heard of Hutts sometimes eating those that displeased them, though judging by the tales she had heard, they preferred to find more creative means of dispatching their enemies, usually involving some horrendous aberration full of fangs and claws. She tentatively reached out in the Force, sending small eddies of perception toward Yuelo's mind, attempting to influence it in any way that might benefit their continued survival, but she found a confusing mass of thoughts and sensations she could not even begin to relate to, much less quantify or influence. It was like sticking her hand in a container, expecting cool, malleable clay with which she may knead to her uses, and instead finding the container full of garbage worms undulating and slithering around her fingers. She withdrew her mental probes with a shudder; she had heard of some species that were resistant to the persuasive powers of the Force, not necessarily due to a natural mental or genetic immunity, but because their brains and thought processes were so completely alien to the predominantly humanoid experience. Perhaps Hutts could be classified as such. She cast a worried glance at Rayf, and found it both comforting and infuriating that he maintained an expression of collected assurance. A brief mental touch of his feelings revealed that he had reached the calm center within himself, falling into the Force and drawing strength from it; this was not another display of false bravado.

The murmur of voices and multiple conversations occurring simultaneously began to fade into near silence as Yuelo stared at them for a lengthy, uncomfortable moment, his eyes rolling about in his head as he scrutinized them closely. There was a rumble in the back of his throat as he inhaled and leaned forward. "I must admit that I did not believe my men when they told me the two who had caused such damage and wanton anarchy within my establishment had returned, their faces undisguised, walking free and tall as if they owned all Point Nadir. Honestly, the both of you perplex me, not only in the fact that I do not know who you are, but in your actions as well, as they must be taken only by those who are precociously confident or supremely stupid."

Foyi was shaken, not by the imposing presence of this Hutt, but by his voice, his mellifluous speech, the words rolling off his tongue in a cultured and careful accent, as if he took great care and pride in enunciating each word of Basic in the correct manner. His Huttese accent was nearly nonexistent. The fact that he could actually form the flabby lips the length of vibroblades around such precise and syllabic sentences had to be a noteworthy feat in of itself. Despite this, when she spoke, she found her voice to be even and assured. "Who we are is not important, Yuelo; what you can do for us, and what we can do for you in return, is."

Yuelo gave a short, barking laugh of surprise. "Indeed!"

Rayf spoke up, his voice equally serene. "The...'incident' the other day was a regrettable consequence of trying to make one of your associates more cooperative. You see, we're looking for something we lost, and we thought he may know where we might find it, and when he finally decided to be talkative, he named you as a source of further information."

Yuelo's laughably small hands rested comfortably on his expansive girth as he leaned back, giving them a look that was more shrewd than it was enraged or disbelieving. "And might I ask if this associate happened to be one Captain Ak-vir Vri?"

"The very same," came Foyi's affirmative reply. "He named you explicitly as a means by which we might find 'the Shepherd'."

Yuelo's eyes opened wider, and some of his guards tensed, awaiting their master's kill order. The Mandallian Giant looked positively bored by the conversation, curling his fingers into fists and shifting from one foot to the other in impatience, as though he would rather be hitting someone in the face than listening to all the conversing around him. The Hutt let out a great, rumbling exhalation, as if there was thunder in his gut. "You claimed to have lost something, which corroborates with what Captain Vri intimated to me after narrowly escaping your...persuasive techniques. Am I to assume that what you have lost is something in the Shepherd's possession? A young Twi'lek female, by any chance? Another 'cousin' of yours?"

Foyi struggled to keep her countenance unwavering; she should have foreseen Yuelo already knowing they sought the Shepherd merely to find Tama. Knowledge was power where this Hutt was concerned, and she could see that this knowledge made Yuelo profoundly smug, an expression on the creature's wide and grotesque face she had not wanted to see. She glanced at Rayf, and though his face had remained neutral, she could see him sweating along his hairline, something he typically did not do even in the midst of combat. Foyi faced the Hutt again and forced her head high. "She is important to us, to be certain, and we wish to be parted from her no longer. Vri told us that she was sold to the Shepherd as part of this slaving side racket the two of you are running, and that you, Yuelo, are the only one on Point Nadir who knows where the Shepherd might be found."

Yuelo sniffed derisively, as if neither her words nor the circumstances at hand fazed him in the slightest. "And for this, you caused such havoc in my cantina? For a simple name and location?"

"You may find that I'll do anything for those I care about."

Yuelo gave a wet, guttural chortle. "And so you reveal your affections for your lost female." The Hutt leaned forward again, his eyes narrowed. "I do not know who taught you to negotiate and coerce, little Twi'lek, but you could do with some further lessons, or a better teacher."

Rayf was about to speak up, attempting to salvage some measure of diplomacy from the debacle that the conversation was fast becoming, but Foyi cut him off, continuing to speak in concise and sharp tones. "If you're done regaling yourself with your own voice and whining about the damage to your obviously still functional and popular bar, you may be interested in what we have to offer you in exchange for simple information, Yuelo."

What few whispered conversations that had been occurring about the perimeters of the room suddenly ceased, giving rise to a thick silence pregnant with tension. It was unlikely that Yuelo was spoken to in such a manner on a regular basis, but if the Hutt was surprised, or even livid at the insulting and demanding tone of voice Foyi had taken, he did not show it. In fact, he seemed pleased; perhaps he relished the implied threat and challenge Foyi and Rayf represented, the fact that there were still sentients out there who were not intimidated by his presence into silence and abject sycophantic groveling intriguing him. Yuelo gave another short, barking laugh, shaking his immense head back and forth in a manner that reminded Foyi of a large, flopping gelatin. Rayf did not look at her, but she could feel his quiet admiration like a soft eddy lapping at the shores of her mind. Yuelo's gaze fell upon her, needling her with his regard as though she were a specimen of a previously unknown species. "Despite your lack of respect and penchant for random vigilante destruction, I believe I like you, little Twi'lek, and I am willing to listen to whatever proposition of business you have to offer. Be aware, however, that despite the reputation of my species, I am no backstabbing scum. The arrangement between the Shepherd and I represents a significant cash flow and a long-standing relationship of professional business and healthy respect for each other's privacy. Based on what you have said so far, I doubt any meeting you plan on having with the Shepherd will end in a civil and nonviolent manner, and so I implore you not to waste my time with anything of less value than that which I have cultivated with the Shepherd. That is, if you wish to leave this room still drawing breath."

Foyi looked pointedly to Rayf, who took the cue and raised his hands showing he was still unarmed and making no sudden movements. He slowly lowered his hands to his belt as the blasters arrayed around the pair shifted to his head, but a wave of Yuelo's stubby fingers prevented them from firing. Rayf carefully opened the pouch on his belt and withdrew a datapad on which he had recorded the copies of the manifest of Sura's warehouse, as well as the holomap detailing the Mines and the most probable locations for which to search for Fische's Legacy. A Nikto beside Rayf snatched the datapad from his hands and spent a moment flipping through its files, most of which had been encrypted, though enough of it had been left in simple Aurebesh characters so as to support Foyi and Rayf's claims that the files on the device represented valuable commodities. As the Nikto subordinate looked through the datapad's contents, Rayf ignored him and spoke directly to Yuelo. "On that 'pad is the complete manifest to a warehouse owned by one of Vri's associates that I'm certain he neglected to clue you in on. Not only was this enterprising individual using his warehouse for lucrative shipping arrangements, but those shipments were laced with hidden caches of ryll, tempest, and glitterstim spice, all high-grade materials." Yuelo's eyes opened so wide at that claim that Foyi was convinced they would emerge from their sockets and plop on the dais before him; she had the distinct impression that Yuelo had not meant to so visibly display his interest, and could not contain his reaction. The Nikto gazing at Rayf's datapad gave Yuelo a brief nod, confirming that as far as he could see, the data supported Rayf's claim. "And if that's not enough to pique your fine sense of business and profit, then you may also be interested in the side project Vri and his associates were working on in their spare time. It may be riskier, and I can't speak for the true accuracy of the information, but there is also a copy of the most detailed map of the Mines ever made, all for the purposes of finding the lost treasure trove of Salovan Fische, his 'Legacy'. My cousin and I are certain that what you find here will be more than a fair trade for some simple information, and discretion on your part."

Yuelo made a slight gurgle in the back of his throat as he considered their words, his enormous, slimy tongue momentarily emerging from his maw to slather his lips with mucus. "Assuming that everything you offer is all that you claim it to be, exactly what do you wish in return?"

"Simple. We want to know who or what 'the Shepherd' is, where he is and where he would have taken the children you've been acquiring for him. And we want your word that you'll say nothing of our imminent arrival, and won't warn him we're coming."

"My word, hmm?" came Yuelo's purring response. In her peripheral vision, Foyi could see Rayf mouthing _His word? Seriously?_ She ignored him as she ventured a step forward.

"Yes. Your word. I am aware of the reputation of your species, Yuelo, though I doubt it's fairly earned, for I believe you to be a man of personal honor and integrity, and thus your assurances that the information you provide is valid, and that you will do nothing to hinder us in righting the wrongs of the Shepherd."

"You assume that I will provide you the information you seek."

"I assume you're not going to let the opportunity we are practically handing to you pass you by."

Yuelo made a sound she could only describe as a growl, his glinting eyes fixated on her. "Even if what the two of you are offering me is real, what makes you think I will not simply take it from you? The both of you walked into my sanctum of your own free will, and now are fully at my mercy. I need only to give the order, and your corpses will be left to the massiffs to feed upon, while my tech specialists slice your pathetic codes and encryption and claim the warehouse for my own, where I can determine whether what you say of this fortune of spice and my chance at the fabled treasure of Salovan Fische are true."

Rayf shrugged, seemingly unconcerned by the threat made on his and Foyi's lives. "Well, you could certainly do that Yuelo, though you may have some difficulty finding the warehouse, considering I didn't include its location in that datapad, or on any part of mine or my cousin's persons. Not to mention the place is a virtual fortress, with more defenses than I think you can throw men at, none of which you could ever hope to disarm without our personal codes to deactivate those defenses and even let you in."

Yuelo waved a dismissive hand. "Please. Point Nadir is a port of no significant size. It would not take long for my men and resources to find this warehouse of yours, as well as neutralize and slice through your defenses. I see few reasons why I should have any need for either of you, reasons that are outweighed by the fact that neither of you have yet to answer for the havoc you caused here the other day, as well as the damage my reputation has suffered due to it." The Hutt had barely finished his threats when all the blasters aimed at them pressed against their heads, throats, and other vital areas on their bodies. One Weequay even jammed his blaster rifle into Rayf's groin with a sneer, and the human gave him a withering glare before responding to Yuelo.

"Did either one of us say the warehouse was in Point Nadir? You seriously believe that we would present such a valuable stockpile to you if it were in a place well within your reach? We're all intelligent sentients here, Yuelo; give us some credit, at least. You could kill us and feed us to your pets, sure; good luck in finding that which we are offering so generously for such a paltry amount on your part." He crossed his arms before his chest, standing defiantly before Yuelo, meeting his gaze with an unwavering stare. Foyi matched it, keeping her expression neutral as the Hutt's eyes swept over her, looking for any hint of deception or weakness in the pair he undoubtedly found most infuriating. Inwardly, Foyi felt both fear and annoyance, as once again Rayf was attempting something both dangerous and surprising, as his bold bluff had not been discussed with her beforehand. He had merely decided to attempt such a bold-faced lie of his own volition, trusting that she would play along, which she intended to, though she made a mental note to slap him upside the head if they survived this encounter. She put her hands to her hips, ignoring the multitude of blaster barrels jammed against various parts of her body, and said in a calm, demanding voice, "What's it going to be, Yuelo? Are you going to have to clean another bloodstain off your floor, or would you prefer to be fortuitously rich in exchange for a little hard data?"

Foyi and Rayf waited impatiently, trying not to flinch every time one of Yuelo's thugs tensed behind his weapon, the blaster barrels chafing against their garments and skin. Yuelo's tail was tapping the dais with a rhythmic and surprisingly weighty sound, his disturbingly reptilian eyes flicking back and forth between their respective countenances. The atmosphere in the room was so quiet, so thick with ready threat and expectant violence, Foyi waited for one of the thugs to pull his trigger just to cut the tension. Yuelo's tail thumped for a final time, producing a sound loud enough to cause vibrations in the floor at their feet, and when he spoke, his voice was soft with a deadly keen edge. "Your fortitude has impressed me in the same manner that your offer has intrigued me. However, as it stands, we are at an impasse. I will give you nothing of what you seek until I can validate the existence of this warehouse and its riches you so fervently extol, and you refuse to divulge such information until you know everything of the Shepherd that I possess."

"A predicament, to be sure," Rayf offered noncommittally.

"What can we do to ensure that our proposed trade occurs?" Foyi asked.

Yuelo's sanguine gaze speared her. "You can gain my confidence in the two of you. You believe that I am a being of integrity, though I cannot say the feeling is returned, for all I know about the two of you is that my cantina is only one area of this asteroid that has suffered at the destructive and anarchic tendencies of your determination. Before I deal with you, you must answer for the damage you have caused here, and that suffered by my reputation." Yuelo leaned so far forward, he looked as though his bulk would cause him to topple forward off the dais. "You disrupted one of the more profitable fights I have arranged in recent months, and caused no small measure of damage to those profits and my reputation as a fight coordinator and entertainer. You owe me a fight. If you acquiesce, you will have proved your own integrity, and I will be willing to give you the information you need at the time you transfer to me the data regarding your warehouse and Fische's Legacy."

Rayf wrinkled his brow, his calm demeanor shattered, replaced by indignity and outrage. "A _fight_? This is your idea of proving ourselves to you, Yuelo? I thought we were dealing with a civilized being here..."

Yuelo's eyes became slits so narrow, they were mere slashes of red in his mottled and wrinkled flesh. "Perhaps you misunderstood me, human. I was merely being polite when I said the word 'acquiesce'; you actually don't have a choice." Both Foyi and Rayf were suddenly grabbed by multiple hands and forced to their knees none too gently, causing the Twi'lek to cry out as her weary and sore knees struck the stone floor hard enough to clack her teeth together, while Rayf gave a grunt of pain as one of the thugs seized a fistful of his thin hair. Yuelo's regard shifted from Rayf to the Twi'lek, and he said simply, "You will fight, little Twi'lek."

"No!" Rayf yelled, nearly rising to his feet again before he was stuck by no less than three blaster stocks to his spine and forced to fall to his knees again, groaning in pain. Foyi made an unintelligible noise of denial as Rayf was injured, but a rough, calloused hand seized her _tchun_ and wrenched her head back with an agonizing pressure. Rayf was breathing heavily, but he was able to bite out a few words of anger. "If...someone has to fight...let it be me. Keep her...out of this...you've no right!"

Yuelo ignored Rayf completely, still staring intently at Foyi. "You _will_ fight, little Twi'lek," he repeated with a purr. "Before you escaped the disaster you caused in my bar, I saw how you handled that Barabel. How a tiny _schutta_ such as yourself was able to best a creature filled with such rage and so high on spice he could no longer think coherently, who felled a Yinchorri with his wits fully intact, is beyond me. But you impressed me, and you will impress me again, and we will commence with business. Or your annoyingly blusterous friend will have his brains vacated all over this floor."

Foyi felt the fingers wrapped about her headtail loosen, allowing her to crane her neck enough to look to Rayf. Pain twisted his face into a grimace, and his continued gasping made it difficult for him to speak, save for a solemn, "No." She could feel his distress in the Force, his fear for her safety and her life, his belief that no matter what happened here, they had failed to persuade Yuelo and that the Hutt would only end their lives after he had had his fill of cruel entertainment at their expense. He would rather suffer the wrath of Yuelo and his thugs, to have his head shredded by blasterfire, than see her beaten bloody in an arena for the Hutt and his sycophants' perverse amusement. But Foyi sent him a calming eddy of thought and feeling, assuring him that she would be fine, that she had no intention of dying today. Thoughts of Tama were forefront in her mind, and despite the physical and spiritual stress she had suffered over the last few days, the aches and pains she felt still present in her body and the exhaustion still trying to creep in, she was determined to do what was necessary to see her sister again. She would do this if that was what stood in the way of achieving that goal, and she would survive to rescue Tama. For her, the choice was simple, and so she craned her neck back to face Yuelo and managed a fine edge of durasteel to her voice when she spat out, "I'll do it."

Yuelo's wide slash of a mouth grew impossibly wider, forming a morbid and feral grin. "Then you shall fight in the arena provided you, the cage, my little Twi'lek. You will fight to the death; nothing is worth fighting for unless ultimate risk is involved, don't you agree?"

Foyi admitted to herself that she did, though she dared not give Yuelo the pleasure of knowing that. Instead, she asked simply, "Who is to be my opponent?"

Yuelo's hand came up slowly, then hooked a thumb over his bulging, lumpy shoulder. Foyi followed the direction indicated, and felt her heart sink into her guts as she saw that he was pointing to the Mandallian Giant standing behind him. The immense alien's gaze was predatory, as though he were sizing her up for his next meal, and his hands clenched into fists she was certain were the size of her entire head. Foyi tried to keep the fear from twisting her features, but she knew it was prominently displayed on her face.

She had a _bad_ feeling about this.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Foyi looked over to Rayf with an expression she hoped exuded confidence, but she felt it not at all as her regard turned back to the Mandallian Giant, who even now was stalking around the perimeter of the room, inexorably striding toward the single entrance to the cage in the center. She had little time to consider her next actions or any type of strategy she might use against such an opponent, for the hands of the thugs about her began to fly across the length of her body, searching for the straps and fasteners of her armor and ripping it free of her form in short, jerking motions. A pair of Weequay and a Houk came away with her Zeison Sha armor divided between them, leaving her dressed only in a sleeveless tunic and cargo pants, her garments still damp and stained with sweat. She felt suddenly cold, the sweat still lingering on her exposed arms cooling rapidly in the strangely cold air. She turned her head to glare at the trio that had procured her armor, dividing it into its constituent pieces between the three of them, most likely to try and add the high-quality pieces to their own armor, or to sell it to some black market fence. As she was forced to stand, she jabbed an angry finger in their direction, growling, "Keep that the way it is; I'll be back for it."

All she got in response were sneers of disbelief and scoffs at the arrogance she displayed, considering her size compared to that of the Mandallian and his unknown fighting prowess. Before she could say anything more, she was shoved forward, the several pairs of arms on her own practically carrying her to the door of the cage, in which her opponent already waited. Without further ceremony, she was tossed inside, and barely had her feet cleared the doorway then the barred door swung closed with a rattling sound of finality, as though it were the lid to her casket. The crowd and entourage of Yuelo that had been deathly silent before began to enter into rowdy conversation once again, placing bets on which of the combatants would survive the longest, who would draw first blood, and who would remain standing in the cage while the other lay bleeding. She noted subconsciously that most of the bets being placed were in the Mandallian Giant's favor, though she tried not to let this concern her. She turned her regard outside the cage, catching Rayf's eyes; the man was virtually torturing himself with worry and fear, the veneer of placid serenity he normally wore ripped to shreds. Belatedly, she realized that she must mean far more to him than she had first believed for his nerves to be so frazzled, and she sent him another mental current of assurance, though his unheard response was merely a swirling miasma of fear and denial. He struggled against those keeping him still, and received another blaster stock to his back, after which his arms were wrenched above his head and held there firmly. Foyi let anger seep into her conscious, calling upon her Zeison Sha training, which taught her that emotions and passions could be harnessed when they were needed, becoming useful tools and weapons that helped sharpen a Warrior's focus in battle and made them indomitable and deadly combatants when necessary. She could feel the Dark Side swimming about the periphery of that anger, lurking in the depths of the unfathomable sea that was the Force, awaiting her beck and call, but she ignored it and kept control of herself and the emotions she was allowing to the fore. She had called upon its seductive and destructive power enough in recent days, and would help neither herself, Rayf, or Tama by succumbing to it now.

She ignored the Mandallian pacing and seething on the far end of the cage and glared through the grid of bars at the leering Hutt upon the dais. She spread her empty hands and drew herself up straight, hoping that she did not appear as exhausted as she actually was. "What weapons do we get?"

A chorus of derisive laughter erupted around the room, and Yuelo's horrid grin split his grotesque face again. "Only the weapons evolution has deemed necessary to grant you." Yuelo's hand came up, palm facing upward, the picture of a benevolent overlord. "You have agreed to this fight, for my favor and the life of your 'cousin', and thus you will conform to the rules laid down for it. You face Koreb Sott today, the reigning and undefeated champion of these cage fights." At the mention of the Mandallian's name, the crowd could not contain its cheer, drowning out the rest of Yuelo's words in a thunderous roar to motivate the Mandallian Giant, calling for the spilling of Twi'lek blood. Yuelo's smile never left his face as he allowed his minions and guests to quiet down again, though his voice was raised when he continued his speech, so that all those gathered could hear him clearly. "Today, this little Twi'lek fights for the lives of her 'cousin', herself, and for the favor of myself after so grievously assaulting this fine establishment, its reputation, and the reputation of myself as well. Today, Koreb Sott fights for greater fame, glory, and the ever-expanding trove of credits he so rightly earns, which will double in size if he brings me the tails off the head of this..." Here Yuelo paused as he remembered he still did not know Foyi's true name, and then decided that it mattered not. "This...this Mysterious Stranger!" Another roar of approval mixed with jeers and cries of hatred at this pronouncement, while Foyi wrinkled her brow in an expression of disgust; she would have chosen a different monicker, if the choice had been up to her, though she doubted it truly mattered. She was just turning to face her opponent when Yuelo bellowed, "Begin!"

Foyi barely had time to react before she felt a sudden vibration in her scalp and _lekku_ as the ray shields were projected on the interior of the cage, keeping the dueling combatants confined. At the same time, Sott gave his own bellow, a war cry of fury and bloodlust, and charged across the intervening space, his stride sending immense, thundering shocks through the ground at her feet. Foyi saw him coming, and despite the aches and sluggishness still in her legs, she had little difficulty in sidestepping the charge, allowing him to continue straight into the ray shield, which knocked him back a step with a piercing electric whine. Foyi drew on the Force to give her strength and felt the exhaustion that had been sitting like an unwelcome guest within her muscles fade away as she danced to the side, narrowly avoiding a swing from the Mandallian's immense, bloodied fist. She failed to see the second swing, however, though the Force provided her a split-second of warning, allowing her to catch the blow aimed for her head as a glancing strike to her shoulder. Even so, the startling strength behind Sott's strike numbed her arm from the shoulder down, and spun her to the stone floor, where she tucked into a roll of flailing limbs. She continued her roll as she sensed her opponent approaching, and came up into a crouch. Foyi spun around in time to see Sott lunging for her with both arms outstretched, attempting to catch her in a lethal embrace. She dropped into a somersault that carried her between the Mandallian's legs, coming up with a swinging kick that planted the heel of her boot into the back of Sott's left leg. He buckled, going down to one knee with little more than a grunt, and Foyi sprang to her feet again, aiming a trio of fast, light punches into the back of his skull, attempting to rattle him enough to put him out of the fight. She cried out in pain after the first strike, though, pulling her hands back as though she had been bitten by something poisonous; it had been like hitting a wall of solid duracrete, and she was fairly certain her knuckles had been hammered into a more squamous state by the blows.

Sott came back to his feet slowly as Foyi backpedaled, testing his leg, which seemed to be uninjured, and glowering with evil intent at her. He lunged for her again with his left hand, causing Foyi to dodge to the right, putting her in reach of his right hand, which snaked forward like a gorm-worm and seized hold of her _tchin_ as she tried to duck. She felt pain radiating through her skull and down to the base of her spine as Sott gave a snarl and bodily hauled her above the floor, using the _lek_ seized in his crushing grip as a pivot from which to throw her through the air. Foyi experienced a brief, rapturous moment of pain and weightlessness before she impacted with the ray shields, off of which she rebounded with no small measure of pain shooting through her body. Foyi rolled to a stop on the floor, agony arcing through her frame as she felt like her _tchin_ was hanging onto her skull by only a fragment of skin, the energy discharge she had taken directly from the ray shields causing convulsions and spasmodic seconds of lost consciousness. She was barely aware of Sott's thundering stride, then his hand reaching down for her _tchun_ , and she gave a shout of anguish that was little more than a squeal as he gripped her head-tail tightly, cranked her neck back with a rough gesture, and then smote her across the face with his free hand. Foyi almost lost consciousness completely from the blow, for it was like being struck in the face by a landspeeder at top velocity. Only her desperate and tenuous hold on the Force pulled her back from the brink of unaware oblivion, but she could do nothing as Sott cranked her head to the side again and used his strength and momentum to flip her on her back. His next attack was to her abdomen, a stomp from his foot that vacated all the air in her lungs while prompting her to vomit whatever had been her last meal. Foyi rolled over on her stomach, ignoring the agony knifing through her spine and guts, for it was either that or choke on the regurgitated contents of her stomach. She heard a collective gasp of disgust from the crowd, and felt the emotional anguish of Rayf, where he continued to struggle against his captors.

Foyi languidly attempted to get up to her palms and knees, which only prompted another kick to her stomach from the Mandallian Giant, and while the strike was vicious enough to prompt more vomit from her throat, it did not have the ferocity behind it the others did. Sott had deemed her weak and unworthy, and wished to prolong the fight for his own perverse amusement. The Mandallian began to pace close beside her, waiting for her to recover her strength enough to at least get back to her feet. Dimly, past the ringing in her skull and the thumping of her overtaxed heart in her ears, Foyi could hear the chanting of the crowd, calling over and again for her death, begging Koreb Sott, their favored champion, to finish her off. She could feel Sott reveling in her pain and fear, in the adoration heaped upon him by the crowd, in the screams for her death. He lived for this, fed on the violence and the recognition it brought him, as though it were the only sustenance from which he gained nutrients.

Foyi continued to crawl away from him, even as he easily kept pace with her pathetic movements, gasping and spitting bile and foul, half-digested nutrient bars and synthesized proteins. Desperately, she reached out to the Force, begging its cool waters to submerge her, to fill her with the power necessary to survive, but the waves were too turbulent, made so by the pain her mind could not separate itself from, and the tantalizing call of the Dark Side, urging her to call upon it, to become an avenging, demonic presence, to rise with unlimited power and rip her enemy to shreds. She shook her head even as she continued to gasp for air; she just wanted to immerse herself in the Force to grant her the means by which she might survive. To use it in any way overtly was an unnecessary risk, a last resort. One she may have come to now.

Foyi felt the perimeter of the ray shield before her, having crawled to the far side of the cage. She could feel the vibrations of the scintillating energy field on her brow, a static on her skin not dissimilar to the impatience rising in her opponent, whose pacing had stopped, replaced by purposeful strides toward her. He had had enough, and the continued goading of the crowd had made the decision to end the fight once and for all for him. Foyi looked back over her shoulder to see the Mandallian Giant striding toward her, flexing his shoulders, his fists clenching. Foyi rolled over on her back and attempted to stand again, but Sott was suddenly there, his massive foot pressing down on her chest and keeping her flat on the ground. He raised his right fist above his head, to bring it crashing down upon her with all the force of a starship in reentry, and it was in that moment that she understood that she would not make it out of this cage alive. And with that realization, the clarity, the calm, she had been seeking in order to call upon the Force suffused her being, and suddenly she felt one with the universe, with her surroundings, detached from her body and the pain that debilitated it. Perhaps she could no longer save herself, but if she failed here, Rayf would die, and Tama would be left alone, with no one to come to her aid. She could not let either one of those things happen.

She perceived Sott's fist descending toward her face as though from a great distance and over an agonizing length of time, for she was one with the Force now, and she knew what must be done. Her left hand came up, her palm facing the Mandallian, and the air rippled as the Force gathered about her and ascended in a great rush of thunder and energy. With an expression of surprise that was almost comical, Sott felt invisible force shove him past the point of his equilibrium, and he fell on his posterior with a grunt, not injured in the slightest, but granting Foyi enough time and space to come up into a crouch. Ignoring the confused and indignant Mandallian Giant, Foyi turned to face the cage's walls, where through the ray shields and the bars, she could see Rayf watching her with abject fear across his face, still held down to his knees by no less than four of Yuelo's thugs. His mouth opened wide in shock as he realized she was ignoring her opponent in order to help him, and he was about to yell something when Foyi's hands came up again and gestured, mimicking the thoughts she bent toward their enemies. The Force surged in violent waves, and the four thugs restraining Rayf were suddenly thrown away from him in all directions, giving shouts of fear and surprise, two of which ended in agony as they struck the hard surfaces of a wall and the dais. Yuelo gave a squawk of consternation as the thug who hit the dais struck the corner edge of it hard enough that his momentum carried him atop its surface to slam against Yuelo's prodigious bulk, knocking the air from him in a great rush of wind. The crowd's shouts were beginning to turn from jeers and exultations to cries of confusion and fear, for as soon as the guards were sent flying in Foyi's telekinetic grip, Rayf leapt to his feet in a rush. He threw himself into the nearest guard, bowling the unfortunate Nikto over, where he received a vicious but precise stomp to the throat from Rayf's boot while he was sprawled flat on his back. As the Nikto fell, he released his hold on his weapon, a VES-700 Pulse Rifle, a blaster that fired a short-range cone of deadly energy across a nine meter area of effect. Rayf caught the Pulse Rifle as it was loosed in midair, shouldered it, and turned it on the small crowd of guards standing before the dais, triggering two bursts and filling the intervening space with fatal waves of energy. The guards that were still attempting to bring their own weapons to bear gave horrid cries of agony as the energy fluctuations ripped through them, and they collapsed in heaps of smoldering garments, rent and bleeding flesh, and superheated armor pieces. Not all those caught in the blasts were killed, but they were incapacitated by agonizing burns or severed limbs and extremities, filling the air with the sounds of their cries.

Yuelo bellowed an unintelligible thunder, and more guards began to clamber into the room from the same doorway in which they had entered, bringing their blasters to their shoulders and firing with careful aim at the Matukai Adept. But Rayf was an unstoppable force of the supernatural now, his body, mind, and actions fully merged with the Force, such that he anticipated each blaster bolt aimed his way long before it came remotely close to damaging him. He spun, sidestepped, and dodged, triggering two more pulses and laying low half a dozen armed guards with flashes of fire, smoke, and blood. None of his widespread waves of deadly energy hit anyone in the crowd, nor did they come anywhere close to the cage, but the spectators either threw themselves behind tables or to the floor, or sprinted for the only exit they were aware of in uncontrollable fear, causing a jam of pressing, flailing bodies that prevented more guards from entering the room.

As the air filled with the cacophony of screams and the concussive whines of blasterfire, the atmosphere suffused with acrid smoke and thin mists of spilled blood, Foyi turned back to her opponent, letting peace wash over her as she awaited the final blow that would end her life. But the punch or kick from the Mandallian Giant never came; he was no longer looking at her, was not even near her. He had lumbered to the other side of the cage, where he was busy slamming his blood-soaked fists against the ray shields, ignoring the stinging pains rippling up his arms, howling for someone outside to lower the energy fields and let him loose. She was uncertain whether he wanted to get out of the cage because he wished to escape the carnage that was rapidly overtaking the room, or wanted to slake his thirst for blood by joining the fray. Whatever the reason, he seemed to have forgotten her completely, which would not necessarily be a detrimental situation to him had Foyi been any other Twi'lek girl.

But Foyi, despite her exhaustion, despite the grievous injuries she had suffered recently and just within the last few moments, was no simple Twi'lek girl. She was a Zeison Sha Warrior, and one with the Force.

Foyi drew upon the Force completely and found that she could stand once more, not because she wanted to, not in a sense of defiance or desperation, but because she simply _must_. She stretched out with her hands to either side of her and telekinetically gripped a few of the ray shield projectors; they quivered in their bases, and with a thought, they seemed to implode, crumpling in on themselves in showers of sparks, fragments of metal and circuitry. There was a flash as the ray shields wavered, then shorted out completely, winking out of existence, for the remaining functional projectors could not bear the increased strain on their energy reserves caused by compensating for the damaged ones, and burned out. Koreb Sott gasped as the ray shields switched off, then looked over his shoulder to see Foyi limping toward him, one hand clutching her bruised and heaving abdomen, the other stretched toward him, palm facing forward. He sneered as he turned to face her, but that sneer became a look of dismay as the Force erupted from her palm in an invisible wave of violence, striking him fully in the chest and hurling him against the door with such velocity that his bulk smashed straight through it, flinging its bent frame wide as he sailed with a howl into the tables ringing the outer edges of the room. Foyi continued her stride forward, hobbling through the open doorway into a scene of utter chaos. The bodies of guards were strewn across the floor, burns from the Pulse Rifle and blaster bolts slashed through their forms, while others appeared to have been injured or even killed by blunt force trauma or vicious slashes. Foyi looked toward the area just before the dais, and was momentarily enraptured by the skills of the Matukai embodied in Rayf, for he had slung the VES-700 across his back after retrieving his wan-shen, still in the process of piecing it back together even as he spun it through wide slashes, lightning jabs, vicious cuts, and lethal stabs. His movements were mere blurs of frenzied, flurried action, but every motion was precise, methodical, measured for just the correct amount of Force and energy, never overextending himself and seldom missing his mark, despite the snarl of ferocity etched into his features. He dodged back and forth as blasterfire converged on his position, dropping into rolls only to come up into a crouch to stab a Houk between armor plates on his abdomen at the very edge of his reach, then falling back into a reversed somersault and springing upright, sending a Gran sprawling with a jab from his elbow. A small cluster of Yuelo's guards attempted to surround him and gun him down with sustained fire, but they came too close, Rayf leaping above their heads just as they triggered their blasters. They screamed as almost every one of them suffered multiple hits from friendly fire, though only one collapsed from high-intensity burns and loss of blood. As the injured guards were reeling from their wounds, Rayf landed in their midst again and swung his wan-shen in a bloody arc about himself, maintaining a deadly spin while his polearm opened throats, severed tendons, and separated limbs and appendages. There was a collective cry of pain, followed by splutters and gurgles, and the squad fell collectively in a heap, Rayf the only one in the small crowd left standing, and barely a sweat breaking across his brow as he continued to whirl his bloodied wan-shen in a flashing orbit around his form.

Foyi's attention shifted past her comrade to the dais upon which sat Yuelo, the Hutt still growling and cursing amidst the chaos and cacophony, growing smaller as a small cadre of his remaining guards shuffled about him, shielding him with their armored bodies and blasters. Foyi shook her head to clear her vision, which was blurring at the periphery, and realized that the Hutt was not shrinking, but was descending; the dais was apparently a lift of some kind, which was rapidly retreating into the floor, no doubt leading to some hidden compartment of the cantina and an escape route. Foyi shuffled forward, out of the cage, the only reason she was still upright being the power of the Force, which had filled her nearly to bursting, the metaphysical energy and limitless potential of the Great Mystery becoming a strain on her body and mind, so that her skin was crawling with it, her head feeling like it might explode from the pressure. She cursed softly to herself, a word lost in the drowning vociferations of the panicked onlookers, the screams of the dying and mortally injured, the last staccato bursts of blasterfire as what remained of Yuelo's security tried desperately to land a shot on the whirlwind of metal and blood that was Rayf Moors. Foyi stumbled over the muddy boots of a dead Rodian and fell to her knees, but her attention was far beyond the physical pains she felt coursing through her body, as she reached out with her mind to find an object familiar to her, one that was like an extension of her own body. The discblade arose from a clutter of bodies near the dais, which had almost completely lowered out of sight, and came spinning toward her waiting palm. Feeling the comforting contours of the weapon's hilt, the weight of the blade curving about her fist, Foyi drew strength from the sense of completion the return of the traditional weapon of the Zeison Sha granted her and struggled to her feet again. As she did so, she heard another war cry to her side, and turned in time to see Koreb Sott had untangled himself from the table she had Force shoved him into, charging her again with his shocking stride. Foyi dropped into a crouch, bringing her discblade up above her head in preparation for a throw, while Sott scooped up a blaster rifle and brought it to his hip, firing a flurry of bolts directly at her. Foyi saw the bolts flying for her face and chest seconds before they connected, but with the Force, that was all the time she needed to dodge to the side, while arcing her arm forward and letting the discblade whirl like a spinning saw from her hand. The blaster bolts whipped past her shoulder and side close enough to evaporate sweat still clinging to her skin and her top, but her Force-assisted aim with her own weapon was true, the discblade sinking into his sternum with a wet, grinding noise as the curved blades chewed apart his scaled skin and spat blood in a bright spray across the bodies on the floor. Sott stopped in his tracks, his fingers loosening on his weapon, the blaster clattering to the floor as his eyes opened wide in disbelief. He craned his neck enough to see the discblade still spinning in his ribs, ejecting flayed flesh and gouts of blood, before it was telekinetically called back to Foyi's waiting hand with a strange sucking sound as it left the wound in the Mandallian Giant's chest. Their eyes met for a brief moment, Sott's gaze filled with a malaise of hatred, fear, and bewilderment, Foyi's gaze merely stoic and unfocused, perhaps mixed with a tinge of sadness as well, as though she were sorry to see Sott die in such a way. And as the discblade's handle slapped into her palm, Sott's small eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed forward, falling on his flattened face and eliciting a resounding shaking in the floor as his immense body struck.

Foyi gave a sigh of relief that became a gasp of pain and instinctively called upon the Force again, trying to keep herself upright and only partially succeeding, as she fell to one knee, her fist clenched around her dicblade, which she pushed into the floor to keep her steady. The din of battle had subsided around her, leaving the last, lingering moans and wet gurgles of the dying, the hiss of cooling metal and rock, the crackle of arcing electricity from damaged electronics about the room. She could still hear the whine of servomotors as Yuelo's lift continued descending into unknown depths, and dimly she realized that she had to get up and get after Yuelo if she was going to find the Shepherd and Tama. Foyi tried to straighten her hunched form, felt agony lance through her torso, and gave a sharp cry as she sank further into the metaphysical waters, willing it to cause the pain of her injuries subside. She knew this was an untenable situation, though, for she was rapidly approaching the limits of her own dependency upon the Force, and would soon have nothing left but pain.

She heard desperate footsteps to her side, and then Rayf was by her side, letting his wan-shen clatter to the floor as he dropped into a crouch beside her. His arms were suddenly around her shoulders, and she felt a cool sensation running through her body as she drank of his familiar and friendly presence in the Force, providing her serenity in the unspoken revelation that he refused to leave her side. His hands came up to either side of her face and turned her head to face him; her blurry vision took a moment to focus, his worried countenance swimming into focus. There was almost more anguish and pain on his own face than what she felt, though she knew without asking that he was largely unhurt save for scrapes and bruises; his expression was born of his concern for her condition. "Foyi? Foyi?! Speak to me! Are you still with me?"

Foyi coughed, her body quivering with barely-suppressed pain and the potential energy of the Force. She felt momentary dismay as she spat a large glob of blood and mucus on the floor, but the sensation came from far away, a mere observer of the sorry state she had found herself in. She met Rayf's pain-stricken eyes and gave a wan smile. "You look worse than I feel."

Rayf made no immediate answer, merely holding her close, clinging to her as though his life depended upon it. Had Foyi been feeling more like herself, she may have bristled at the touch, shoved him away even, but she merely consented herself to allowing him to embrace her and cradle her close, drawing comfort and strength from his Force presence, from the healing energies he was attempting to suffuse her with. She could tell that his talents in the Force did not lie along the realms of healing and regeneration, but he was trying as best he could to keep her alive. She could not see his face when he next spoke as her head was tucked against his shoulder, but his voice was thick with emotion. "You are the most stubborn and determined person I know, you know that? And that's coming from a Corellian."

Foyi gave a slight chuckle and immediately regretted it. She gently extricated herself from his arms and slowly clambered back to her feet, swaying slightly but remaining upright only because Rayf stood with her, and kept a strong grip on her shoulder. She grimaced and pulled on the waters of the Force, allowing the waves to trickle down over her and shove the pain aside to a place far removed from her conscious thoughts. The effort was incredibly taxing, and she almost collapsed from the act that was normally second nature to her. She would not be able to keep herself going in such a way for much longer, which meant they had little time to waste. She hefted her discblade, which suddenly felt as though it weighed dozens of kilos more than it actually did, and murmured, "Yuelo's getting away. We have to go after him."

Rayf only left her side when he was confident that she could stand on her own, then carefully peered down the rectangular pit left by the descending dais. He trotted back over, retrieving the discarded pieces of her armor from the bodies of the guards who had been intent on dividing her Zeison Sha armor and selling it. With careful but swift movements, Rayf helped her strap and belt the pieces back onto her frame, eliciting several gasps and tears of pain from her as he did so, but no further complaints. He grimaced in apology as he helped her back into her armor, then began speaking while she donned the breastplate. "I didn't see the lift, but its pitch-black in the shaft down there; either Yuelo didn't install any lights, or something we did up here has knocked out power to them. I could feel the Hutt and his minions down there, though. I didn't feel them moving too quickly, so I don't think they've reached the bottom yet. If we're going to go after him, now's the time, before Yuelo gets away in a speeder or skiff or ship or whatever the hell he has down there as an escape plan. And if he escapes, he'll bring more guards, probably with Anjiliac reinforcements. He and Zietta have worked together in the past, and though they aren't close, Zietta's going to see an attack on Yuelo by two rogue Force-users as a potential threat to the entire Anjiliac operations here in Point Nadir."

Foyi nodded, giving a last hiss of pain as Rayf tightened the final pieces of her armor about her. "Well, I don't know about you, but I've become quite tired of Point Nadir. Let's have another chat with Yuelo, and then we'll find Tama and not come back here until everyone we've met here forgets about us, or dies."

Rayf gave her a wry grin that did not reach his eyes. "Sounds like an excellent idea, kid." He squatted down by one of the bodies and hefted a large, unwieldy, but deadly weapon, presenting it to her with some measure of apprehension, as though he were concerned she would not be able to handle it. "Thought you might want your disruptor back. Could come in handy for whatever that murglak's got waiting down below for us."

Foyi took hold of the disruptor, sheathing her discblade first. The weapon felt heavy and leaden in her aching hands, though she felt that in her condition, a highly explosive energy rifle was probably an easier weapon to wield than one that required a throwing arm too injured and tired to do much with, and an exhausted mind that had little strength left for telekinetic control of the discblade. She gritted her teeth and consigned herself to carrying the disruptor rifle; she looked up to see Rayf retrieving his wan-shen and pulling half of it apart, leaving the bladed end and about half a meter of hilt still intact, making it more suited to a one-handed grip. He then searched through the bodies for a moment and stood with a grin as he found a WESTAR-34 Blaster Pistol not unlike the one he had possessed earlier, slipping it into the empty holster at his belt. He squatted down again, and his grin widened as he retrieved a utility belt heavy with short, thin cylinders with activation studs on the sides and clips on the top. Foyi gave him a confused expression, and he explained, gesturing to the objects on the belt. "These are WW-41 CryoBan grenades. They generate chemicals that flash freeze almost anything in their immediate blast radius, disrupting most droids and electronics, and giving organic opponents nasty cases of frostburn and nerve damage, keeping them frozen in place for a short time if we're lucky. These should give us the edge we need."

Foyi nodded and began walking toward the open pit that denoted the lift upon which Yuelo had made his escape. She stumbled as she did so, bracing the barrel of her disruptor on the stone floor to stop herself from falling over. Rayf was by her side in an instant, and his voice was hoarse with distress for her condition. "Are you sure you're up to this?"

Foyi took in a lengthy exhalation, ignoring the pain that slashed through her ribs in response. "I have to be. Yuelo knows where Tama is, and what 'the Shepherd's' done with her." She glanced back at the body of the Mandallian Giant, then gazed at all the corpses strewn across the floor, the destruction evident in the room. "And someone has to answer for this tragedy."

Rayf placed a supporting hand on her back, though she felt as though the touch was more for his benefit than hers, like he was afraid she would slip away completely if he did not maintain some sort of tactile sense of her presence. "Yuelo will for these deaths, and for what he caused to happen to you. Let's go hang a Hutt by his tail, shall we?"

* * *

The secret lift that allowed Yuelo and his remaining minions to escape the carnage of the cage room above lowered into the darkness, the malfunctioning glowstrips lining the turbolift's shaft flickering and causing harsh shadows to dance over the strained and fearful expressions of those huddling on the lift. Yuelo was thumping his tail nervously, the nictating membranes of his eyes flicking back and forth over his corneas in irritation, a result of the flashing intemittence of darkness and light. He could feel his blood thundering squamously in his ears, a result of the fear and anger that clenched the prodigious musculature and rolls of fat from his bulbous head all the way down to the tip of his tail. He had not felt this terrified in decades, not since he had been little more than a Huttlet just beginning to carve out a name for himself amongst the cutthroat politics and cultural tribulations of his species. He was a crime lord of little repute and power compared to some of his peers, but what little he had created for himself he had zealously innovated, protected, and grown over the course of his many years, building a reputation for competence and intelligence, matched only by his willingness to be ruthless when necessary. While in public he cultivated an image of foreboding and ambition, he inwardly doubted he would ever rise to the prestige of _kajidii_ , and had learned to be content with the highly-profitable and respected establishment of the Cruelest Cut. But to have his position undermined so handily by only two low-lives he had been unable to discover the identities of, to have most of his bar trashed and hanging on the verge of ruination not once, but twice, in almost as many days, elicited both fear and fury in him. He was afraid of the two humanoids with the impossible powers and enviable luck, and that fear made him furious at not only them, but at himself, for falling into such a position of weakness, though he privately wondered what he could have done differently to prevent it. The lift beneath his dais had been a contingency that he had installed in the initial construction of the tunnels, warrens, and chambers that would become the Cruelest Cut, a backup plan for the remote possibility that someone may one day walk into his bar and deem themselves powerful and ferocious enough to challenge him. He had never believed he would have actually had to use it, which had led to increasing levels of neglect and entropic decay over the years as his men had become sloppy and apathetic in caring for it. The lift's servomotors made a squealing, grating noise that was agonizing upon his sensitive auditory membranes, and the lift shook so badly, he half-expected it to simply collapse and plummet them all to the bottom of the shaft, a fall he would most likely survive, though he could not necessarily say the same for the mercenaries gathered about him, his only means of protection from the human and Twi'lek with the impossible powers.

Finally, the lift reached the bottom of the shaft, grinding to a halt with a final scream of metal upon icy, brittle stone. A jagged doorway hewn from the asteroid's stone opened into a tunnel that sloped upward to a large cavern that Yuelo's minions had discovered in the process of carving out the corridors and caverns of the Cruelest Cut several dozen meters above their heads. It was unknown if the cavern had been a natural hollowing of Resh 9376, or if it represented the remnants of a failed mining operation by any number of previous denizens of the shadowport over the centuries, perhaps even a doomed expedition by Salovan Fische and his men. That cavern had been quickly expanded upon by Yuelo's orders, culminating in the construction of a lift to access it, and a tunnel that wound through the rock and underneath the Nest, terminating in a heavily-fortified warehouse Yuelo owned in the Trade District. In the middle of the cavern sat a hoversled, thick with collected dust and particles of ice, around which were arrayed several crates filled with armor, weapons, and spare power generators. Lumas on small stands began to effuse soft glows in response to their presence, casting the cavern in deep shadows competing with the pale light of their paltry illumination.

Yuelo tried to suppress a shiver that worked its way down to his tail as the lift came to a halt; he had forgotten how ridiculously cold it was down here, where only minimal life support systems had been installed. His guards, a collection of Weequay, Nikto, Houks, and even a Bothan, leapt off the lift with much enthusiasm and began running toward the repulsorsled and the crates of supplies, while Yuelo slid his bulk off the dais' flat surface and began to work his way across the slope of the ramp up into the cavern, the floor of which had been ground smooth long ago to make it easier for him to slide across. As he did so, his stubby hands pointed in turn to the repulsorsled and the crates, raising his voice to command attention, but being careful to keep it cool and collected, as if the carnage that had occurred in the room above them had not fazed him in the slightest. "Ukai, get on that hoversled and start her up; I want to be in my safehouse in the next five standard minutes, even if you have to push the sled behind me. Gar-Ilv, I want you and the rest of your men to get out the E-Web and set it up at the top of the ramp. Vape anything that comes down the lift after me, then get yourselves to the safehouse once it's clear. We'll all be back in the Cruelest Cut before the end of this rotation, assuming you intend to earn your pay today."

His men did not directly respond except to rush to complete their assigned tasks. The Bothan man sprinted for the hoversled and began fiddling with its controls, attempting to initiate a cold start. Meanwhile, the Weequay known as Gar-Ilv led several others to the crates, where they began extricating extra power packs, tibanna gas cartridges, and the constituent pieces of the bulky but powerful E-Web Heavy Repeating Blaster Yuelo's contacts had procured from the black market and secreted away here long ago. As they set up the weapon emplacement, Yuelo slid past them and gave a brief nod of his head, the only way he intended on showing his gratitude for their service at this point; if they wanted encouragement, they would be showered with it, as well as bonuses to their pay, as soon as they ensured his safety and the deaths of his enemies. He could faintly hear the last burst of blasterfire echoing down the shaft behind him, and dared hope that what remained of his security force had just ended the lives of the pair who had caused so much inconvenience. But then he remembered the Twi'lek girl, suffering damage and injury that would have felled a gundark, and yet reaching out with her mind to free her friend, then throwing Koreb Sott bodily through the door of the cage, and he remembered the Corellian, who had retrieved that strange polearm of his and gone into a frenzy with such speed and ferocity, over a dozen men armed with blasters had been unable to withstand his onslaught. Somehow, he doubted that any of the guards he had left in the room above had survived.

Yuelo tensed his muscles and put some extra speed behind his corpulent form, drawing within meters of the repulsorsled, though the vessel had yet to rise from the ground. The Bothan, Ukai, probably would have been sweating were his species capable of it, though the subtle shifts to the gradations of his fur that Yuelo had learned to read long ago showed that he was on the verge of panic. Ukai was desperately manipulating the controls of the vehicle, to which the hoversled's only response was a throaty, sputtering cough. Ukai glanced at his employer, and the glare the Hutt favored with him could have melted durasteel if expressions had had any sort of physical lethality. "What's wrong?" Yuelo asked in a flat voice, an undertone of threat readily apparent to the attentive and sensitive ears of the Bothan.

Ukai swallowed visibly, his ears flicking back and forth in anxiety. "I'm trying to start the sled, _lorda_ , but it's been down here too long without maintenance. There's ice in the manifolds, and the servos are worn out."

"Will it run or not?"

The hoversled gave another cough that keened up into a whine for a moment before lowering in octave to a worrisome sputter. Ukai gritted his teeth. "I...don't know yet. I'll keep trying."

Yuelo continued to glower at him as he began to pull his bulk atop the sled, which made it whine for a moment as Ukai continued to try and initiate the startup sequence. "Know this, Ukai. Your attempts had better be fruitful; all of our lives may rely on you getting this slagheap running again."

Meanwhile, under the shouted orders of Gar-Ilv, Yuelo's guards had set up the E-Web and primed its power generator, which gave an appreciative whine as the weapon emplacement spooled up. Two guards were assigned to operate the heavy repeating blaster, a Houk and a Nikto, while the others either armed themselves with spare blasters from the other crates, or trotted over and began opening access ports on the repulsorsled, seeing what repairs they could make to get the vehicle moving. Yuelo watched all the activity with an air of disapproval, the weight of his regard being a greater motivator than any harsh words he could lever their direction. The sputtering of the vehicle began to level out, only to die again as Ukai attempted to force a cold start, eliciting several choice expletives in Bothan from him. Yuelo's tail was lashing back and forth, the only exterior indication of his fear, and he concentrated on making it lie still, for there was little he could do but bark orders and wait. Of course, he could try and slither down the tunnel on his own, but his bulk would make it nearly impossible to gain speed of any great significance, and if the human and Twi'lek were still alive and somehow got through the rest of his guards, they would run him down with little effort.

The Hutt heard a shout from Gar-Ilv, a guttural proclamation in Huttese so accented, Yuelo could not make out exactly what he said. He did not need to, though, for the Weequay was indicating a small device that had rattled down the shaft, a cylinder of glinting metal that rolled and bounced off the lift before suddenly disappearing in a flash of light and concussive force. A waft of gas and spray of chemicals painted several meters of the ramp's lowest point, as well as the level surface of the lift itself, spreading a corona of ice over the metal and stone. The glowstrips closest to the blast suddenly winked out and stayed dark, and the sound of the blast rolled up the ramp and reverberated with an echoing roar in the cavern's confines. The response of the Hutt's mercenaries was immediate, as they all stood at the top of the ramp and opened fire with their blasters into the shaft, filling the tunnel and the lift beyond with a withering fusillade of lethal energy and smoke, the cavern echoing with the din of the whines of blasterfire, the heavy stuttering of the E-Web, the nearly-constant explosions of the lasers impacting stone and ice, spraying shards of the harder materials about the interior of the tunnel and the lift with high-pitched _pings_. Yuelo instinctively attempted to cover his ears, but his stubby arms could not reach past the excessive layers of flesh and fat to contact his head. His guards sustained their fire, filling the corridor and the ramp with clouds of shrapnel glowing with heat, a miasma of superheated ice and evaporated moisture, producing a sanguine glow interspersed with frighteningly jagged shadows. In the midst of the continuing fire, two more CryoBan grenades dropped down the shaft and erupted with icy chemicals and vapors, further adding to the obscuring clouds of dust and ice in the tunnel, until Yuelo realized that he could not see anything through the haze, which crept farther up the ramp and was inexorably making it more difficult for any of his guards to actually see if anything was coming down the shaft or up the ramp to assault them.

Yuelo had to roar, "Cease fire!" at least four times before his guards heard him, and only reluctantly did the Nikto operating the E-Web let the turret spool down. The guards looked to him with confusion and trepidation, believing that their best tactic at this point was to continue firing into the corridor, discouraging anyone above from even attempting to come down the shaft. But Yuelo had realized that it was likely their enemies had been goading his guards into maintaining heavy fire simply to create the obscuring mist that now filled much of the ramp. Even now, that haze continued to swirl and hover, so thick with shards of rock, ice, and CryoBan chemicals, no one could see through it. Yuelo glared at Ukai, who had stopped trying to start the hoversled in favor of watching the display of firepower, but under the Hutt's cruel gaze, he immediately returned to his work.

Yuelo turned back to his guards, and was about to give them orders, to wait for the mist to clear, the dust to settle, and watch for signs of any movement in the shaft, when a small object came flying out of the mist like a soaring xuvva, heading directly for the E-Web and its gunners. Yuelo had no time to yell a warning when the cylindrical object struck the side of the E-Web's barrel and exploded, producing a cloud of frigid chemicals that blew the Nikto and Houk backward, and toppled those guards closest to them. The E-Web made a keening noise as its overheating metal was suddenly flash-frozen, and from his vantage point, Yuelo could see fractures rapidly opening on the weapon's chassis, while the power generator made a shrill noise as electricity arced from its ruined circuitry. The Nikto and Houk had no chance to scream as the CryoBan encased them in a thin layer of ice, and they collapsed to the floor, rigid and immobile. Gar-Ilv began shrieking as the chemicals rendered his right arm and right side immobile and numb, while another Weequay stared at his left arm and leg in shocked horror, as if he could not believe that those limbs refused to respond to his mental commands. The other guards recovered quickly, picking themselves up and filling the corridor with sporadic blasterfire, which only contributed to the reformation of the opaque mist, which had begun to dissipate until they retrained their fire. Yuelo screamed at them to step back, to not reveal their locations, but his guards could not hear him over the shrieks of blasterfire. The mist swirled again, and another CryoBan grenade came sailing up the ramp with impossible motions and speed, whereupon it exploded in the midst of several of his guards, flash-freezing three of them and injuring two more. That was the last straw, for the guards who remained standing began to spread out, retreating deeper into the cavern, firing occasional shots down the ramp at the opaque mist and chemicals. Yuelo gave them up for loss and turned to Ukai, practically shrieking in the Bothan's pointed ears, "Get this _kriffing_ sled moving _now_!"

Ukai made a noise of denial and rage, and the repulsorsled coughed and sputtered before finally roaring to life, the sled beginning to rise off the icy floor, straining under the Hutt's weight. Yuelo shifted his bulk, turning to face the back of Ukai's head, opening his mouth to tell the Bothan to pilot the repulsorsled as fast as the vehicle would take them to the warehouse, but he was interrupted when a blasterbolt fired with pinpoint accuracy passed through the Bothan's throat, and he dropped without a sound, leaving a smear of blood and scraps of fur on the control console. Yuelo spun his enormous head to gaze in horror down the ramp, for the mist had parted itself in response to invisible hands, and emerging from the shaft filled with rubble and debris were the human and Twi'lek, charging up the ramp, the former at a breakneck sprint, the latter in a hobbling but determined gait. The human was the lead of the assault, though the way he always kept directly ahead of the Twi'lek revealed his intention to protect her from the guards' retaliation. In his left hand was a glinting blaster pistol, from which had emerged the shot that had killed Ukai, and his right gripped a shortened version of his strange and deadly spear, which slashed and whirled left and right as his remaining guards fired upon the human, the blade catching the blasterbolts and deflecting them into walls, ceiling, and even those who had fired them. Two more guards went down, victims to their own blasterbolts, before either the human or Twi'lek had fired a shot. The Twi'lek girl, her body tensed and limping with pain but her expression focused and serene, raised a disruptor rifle to her shoulder and triggered an emerald blast of energy, which impacted the ground at the feet of two guards and blew them across the chamber, shredding their limbs in the process. The ramp became a brief and bewildering atmosphere of smoke, stone shards, blaster bolts, and concussive disruptor blasts, and by the time the pair had reached the top of the ramp, where the disabled E-Web still sat, only two guards remained, firing a pair of bolts at the dark-skinned human, who batted them away as if they were an afterthought, while the green-skinned Twi'lek crested the ramp and triggered her disruptor, blowing them both away.

Yuelo had seen enough; he shoved Ukai's body aside with his bulk and heaved himself up to the controls, putting the vehicle into forward momentum. The repulsorsled whined as the throttle engaged, and it began to pull away from the cavern, heading deeper into the tunnel and toward the safehouse. But he had barely advanced a few meters before there was a green flash in his peripheral vision, and he felt his stomach drop to his tail as the sled jumped over a meter in height and flipped over, hurling Ukai's body against the wall of the tunnel and sending the Hutt rolling across the icy floor. Yuelo felt his head strike a jagged protrusion on the tunnel's wall and pain arced through the mantle within his head, but he did not swoon or lose consciousness; he would have had to suffer far more damage for that to be a possibility, fear keeping him aware. He struggled to right himself, grunting as he maneuvered his bulk around in a corkscrewing motion, his muscles straining to move the obese folds of flesh until his head and upper body were atop his tail and foot once more. He breathed heavily and cast his eyes about, trying to see through the acrid clouds of smoke and chilling vapor, the liquid shadows flowing through the atmosphere, guided by the malfunctioning lumas. The hoversled lay on its side just behind him, propped against the wall of the tunnel, its entire assembly scarred by energy scoring, one edge crumpled inward and smoldering. Ukai's body was crushed beneath the weight of the overturned vehicle, and Yuelo could not help but wonder if he would be next.

Then, stepping from the shadows and mists came a pair of silhouettes, materializing into the fearsome aspects of the human male and the Twi'lek female. Both had their weapons trained on him, though Yuelo noticed with no small measure of discomfort that the human had holstered his blaster and melee weapon in favor of the VES-700 Pulse Rifle he had been carrying on his back. Being a Hutt, Yuelo possessed a thick, slimy hide that was impervious to many types of damage from both melee and ranged weapons. It would take several blaster bolts of high-intensity to melt through his skin, exposing layers of blubber and fat that protected his vital organs. However, he highly doubted he could survive even a single blast from the Twi'lek's disruptor, and he did not even want to think about what a Pulse Rifle was capable of doing to a member of his species. He doubted its cone of energy would break his skin due to its less concentrated manner, though it was likely to heat the flesh to the point that his innards began to boil. Slowly, Yuelo raised his hands and tried to keep the fear from showing on his face.

The human sneered, though there was nothing but simmering rage in his eyes. "What's the matter, Yuelo? Got nothing to say now that you're outside your castle, with no one to protect you? Not so cruel and domineering now that you're about to be one _creespa_ worm, huh?"

The Twi'lek girl took a step forward, still holding the disruptor at her side, while she placed one hand on her friend's arm, as much to calm him as support herself. Yuelo could see she was about ready to collapse, and he wracked his brain for a means by which he might turn this into an advantage, but he was in an untenable situation, as the human looked like he had survived the entire ordeal almost completely unscathed. Such an occurrence should not be possible, but so it was. Yuelo was defeated, yet he maintained a passive face, refusing to beg for his life but seriously considering it, he was so afraid that he would lose it while bereft of his power and dignity. The human seemed to calm down at her touch, and the Twi'lek looked up at the Hutt, a mixture of pain and sadness etched into her face, though her eyes were still sharp, and promised only horrid things for him should he choose not to cooperate. "It's time for a new deal, Yuelo," she said in a voice that only quavered slightly. "You tell us what we want to know, and we let you live. Simple as that."

Yuelo had the courage to scoff. "That's it? That's what you offer? Do you expect me to live long when my rivals hear of the damage you've done to the empire I've built for myself? You offer me death now, or death later. That is not much of a choice, little Twi'lek."

The Twi'lek shook her head. "You seem like a somewhat intelligent sentient, enough to know that if we don't get what we want now, we _will_ kill you and rummage through what's left of your files, your records, and your holdings until we find what we need. You give us the information we need, and we leave you alone with what you have left, with the assumption that you will be able to turn that to your advantage and survive. Make your choice, Yuelo."

The human stepped closer with the Pulse Rifle, and Yuelo could see that if the Twi'lek let go of his arm, he would fire, no matter what the Hutt's next words were. Yuelo had caused the Twi'lek harm, the girl being important to him, and he would not let that act go unless she convinced him otherwise. Yuelo could appreciate the sentiment, even if he still hated the two who stood before him making threats. But they were threats they had proven already that they were more than capable of following up on; he truly did not have any choice in the matter. With a great sigh, he exhaled his held breath, then seemed to deflate, finally admitting to himself that he had been beaten by a superior foe. "I only deal with the Shepherd on an infrequent basis, and only when he contacts me for new slaves, always females of fourteen standard years, and males of twelve. The species doesn't matter, only the ages; why, he's never explained to me, nor anyone he's ever dealt with, as I doubt I am the only one. I've always used my partnership with Captain Vri and my connections with the Anjiliacs to acquire slaves that fit the requirements from their regular shipments, but only when he asks. He always pays well, through several shadow accounts spread throughout the galaxy, and he has his providers ship the slaves he wants to specific coordinates on Felucia, at an old landing platform abandoned by the Separatists after the Clone Wars, where he waits until my men leave the surface to pick up the slaves we've delivered. I've never spoken with the Shepherd in person, nor am I privy to what species or sex they belong to, if the Shepherd is even an organic being. There's even a bounty on the Shepherd, as the deaths of hundreds of children have been attributed to him, but so far, no one has been able to find him, and the bounty's never been as good as the credits he pays for even one slave that meets his prerequisites."

"So 'the Shepherd' is hiding somewhere in the jungles of Felucia?" the human asked skeptically.

Yuelo's nictating membranes covered his eyes for a moment, his approximation of a human shrug. "Or he has a ship land there when we're gone and takes the slaves somewhere else in the galaxy."

"And handing innocent children over to a known murderer for whatever sick purpose he desires has never occurred to you as _wrong_?" asked the Twi'lek, her face weary and saddened, though her voice was as sharp as a vibroblade.

Yuelo gave her an incredulous glance; the question was inane, in his estimation, far beyond the naivete he had originally attributed to her. "Perhaps I did not make myself clear. My entire relationship with the Shepherd is purely a series of infrequent but lucrative business transactions. I care not for what merchandise he wishes to acquire and purchase, only that by dealing with him, I have attained far more resources with which I could use to build my empire here." Yuelo made a grimace. "What remains of it, anyway..."

The human scoffed. "Your 'empire'? Yuelo, you owned a _bar_ , maybe a few warehouses and ships, that's it. What Palpatine's got, _that's_ an empire; you've just been squatting your slimy ass on a slagheap, and we just knocked it down to size for you a little." He gestured threateningly with the Pulse Rifle. "You should have taken the deal we offered, Yuelo. You've no one to blame for this save yourself, so quit your whining and give us the _kriffing_ coordinates to that landing platform."

Yuelo eyed the barrel of the weapon pointed at his face, and briefly considered responding with a last show of defiance, but he weighed the value he placed on his own life against that which he assigned to his business arrangement with the Shepherd. It truly was not a choice. He gave another exhalation, a great wind of humid, fetid air, and rattled off the coordinates from memory, taking momentary pride in his ability to recall most information he had learned or viewed with great accuracy when he needed it. The Twi'lek girl glanced to the human and shouldered her disruptor while the human lowered his Pulse Rifle and withdrew a datapad. Once prompted, Yuelo repeated the coordinates, and after referencing the numbers against starcharts and the Holonet, the human confirmed that the coordinates originated from a remote location on Felucia. The human put his datapad in a pouch on his belt, then aimed his Pulse Rifle again; Yuelo could see him seriously considering firing upon the Hutt anyway, but Yuelo remained resolute, refusing to beg for his life even as the blood thundered in his ears, facing death straight in the face. The Hutt could see the human's trigger finger flexing, but his actions were cut short by a scathing look from the Twi'lek, who then gestured slowly with her own weapon down the tunnel that Yuelo had intended on escaping through. "This tunnel. Where does it lead?"

Yuelo swallowed; his throat had suddenly gone dry, which was incredibly unusual for a Hutt. "It comes up under a warehouse I have in the Trade District. A...safehouse, of sorts. Had I reached there, the two of you would not have been able to get to me."

A significant look passed between the human and Twi'lek, one that Yuelo could not fathom. He had never been particularly adept at reading humanoid expressions, especially the subtle ones. The human turned his smirking but enraged visage to the Hutt, muttering, "Good thing we got you first, eh?" He looked to the Twi'lek again, awaiting her lead, and the girl stepped closer to Yuelo, her nose turning up slightly at the heavy musk of his body odor. "Is there anything else you can tell us about the Shepherd? Anything else that would help us identify him, her, or it and rescue the slaves you've provided him?"

Yuelo let a sly grin split his lipless mouth, spreading his maw from one side of his head to the other. "There's more I could tell you, yes. But in exchange, I want something that will help me recover the losses I have suffered at your hands. That warehouse filled with contraband and glitterstim would be agreeable, and then I would happily tell you all that I know regarding the Shepherd, all I've heard and speculated."

The Twi'lek's gaze became brittle, and she shoved the barrel of her disruptor in the Hutt's belly. "That was the wrong answer, Yuelo. You lost your chance to negotiate or make deals back in that chamber above our heads. Spit out what you know, or we're all going to discover what a Hutt looks like on the inside."

Yuelo looked down at the disruptor in her hands; he could feel the heat of the barrel, which was still cooling after having been fired so recently, and that increase in pressure and heat elicited another thrill of scintillating fear through him. He swallowed again, then murmured, "As I said, no one knows much about the Shepherd. No one knows his true identity, where he came from, and where he currently resides. The only beings who get close to him are those he commissions for new slaves, but only through middle men, shadow accounts, and secret drop points. Hundreds of missing and murdered children have been credited to him, and he even has a death mark in several systems, though few, if any, have actually pursued the bounty because there is so little information to go on. What little is said about him is contradictory and suspect, though most rumors claim he is something...unnatural. That he has powers and abilities that shouldn't be possible. Like the two of you. Perhaps this is how he hides himself so well. Or perhaps his wish for child slaves has something to do with maintaining and growing those powers. I had assumed these rumors were just the superstitious mumblings of spicehead spacers, but after seeing the two of you, I wonder." Yuelo leaned forward, and had the sudden confidence to leer down at both of them. "If it's true, I hope you find him. The Shepherd's been around far longer than either one of you, and if he has similar powers, I doubt you could withstand him."

The Twi'lek gave her companion a look of alarm, but if the human was fazed by Yuelo's recounting of these rumors, he did not show it. "Care to continue being helpful, Yuelo, or have you nothing more to share?"

Yuelo grumbled in the back of his throat, a guttural sound that made his entire body quiver. "I have nothing more to say to either one of you. I have told you all I know about the Shepherd." He drew himself up to his full height, hoping the considerable size and weight he had on both of the interlopers made him look impressive. "If you're going to kill me, you had best get on with it."

The human looked as though he truly wanted to end Yuelo's life, but a soft touch on his shoulder from the Twi'lek girl made his rage deflate almost as quickly as it had arisen, and he stepped back, holding the Pulse Rifle in a leisurely stance across his body. The Twi'lek continued to cling to his shoulder, though she appeared to be doing so for support, rather than a means of tactile affection. "We're not going to kill you, Yuelo," came her voice, distant and sad. She also lowered her weapon, stabbing the barrel against the floor in a modicum support. "I realize it took some coercion, but you have proven to be more than useful, and we told you that if you helped us, we would spare your life. We will even leave your safehouse at the end of this tunnel intact, save for what we need from it, if necessary. But there is nothing you could say that would convince us you will not attempt to warn the Shepherd of our imminent arrival, to spite us if for no other gain on your part. So we're just going to keep you busy, give ourselves a headstart. I'm sure you understand." Before Yuelo could ask what it was that she intended to do, her hand lifted off the human's shoulder and stretched out in the direction of the collapsed and overturned repulsorsled. Yuelo could feel vibrations in his thick hide and his acute sensory organs as the air warped and took on a barely-perceptible hum around them, and to his horror, the repulsorsled began to rise into the air, despite being turned on its side and its repulsorlifts completely nonfunctional. The Twi'lek let out a soft groan as she strained, and the hoversled flipped over so that it was relatively horizontal, rising higher into the air and slowly coasting to hover above Yuelo. The Hutt gave a roar of denial and fear as the hoversled plummeted down upon him, its bulk ramming into his back and tail, eliciting another great exhalation from him. The weight of the vehicle pressed down on him, stunning him with its size and the force of the blow, pressing him against the floor of the chamber and rooting him there completely. Yuelo cried out in pain as the vehicle compressed his form, and began to wriggle and squirm, attempting to slide out from under it, the slippery nature of his form granting him an advantage to worming his way out of the tightening, confining space. But then the human stretched out his own hand behind him, and chunks of rubble and fully-laden crates sailed through the air at his beckoning, stacking themselves in a haphazard pile upon the flat surface of the hoversled, Yuelo emitting a shriek of pain as each new addition to the weight pressing him to the floor was added. Finally, the atmosphere stopped quivering, and both the human and the Twi'lek lowered their hands. Yuelo made an unintelligible sound of pure rage and frustration, for no matter how much he struggled, he could not free himself from the pile of debris that had been heaped upon him, nor could he angle himself in such a way that he could lift the detritus off of him with his arms; even if he could reach, he had not used his arms for anything strenuous in decades, and thus doubted he had the required strength. This was worse than being killed. This was pure humiliation, trapped within his own escape route, unable to free himself until someone came to find him, at which point whatever was left of his reputation would be truly destroyed. He continued to squirm and struggle, but he was only exhausting himself, and the objects piled atop him were shifting as he moved, so that he was only becoming more entangled. He finally heaved a sigh and stopped, glaring down at the pair as they began to walk away down the tunnel that would eventually lead to the warehouse he had used for emergencies. The Twi'lek girl looked to be barely standing upright now, and the human's arm was around her for support, though he was practically dragging her along with him as they hobbled further away. They did not even bother to look back at them as he roared in frustration again, screaming after them, "You had best flee Point Nadir while you still can, you mudcrutch whelps! When I get out of this, if you're still here, you'll wish you had _killed me!_ "

Neither the human nor the Twi'lek responded as they disappeared around a corner of the tunnel, leaving Yuelo to wallow in miserable frustration, seething with anger and boiling rage as he considered how long it would take him to work his way out of his confinement by himself, if that was even possible. The idea of pitifully calling for help was beginning to have a greater appeal to him as he considered it, though without a comlink, he would have to wait until someone was close to the shaft of the ruined turbolift. When and if that would happen, he was uncertain, which only caused him to writhe and pant in even greater vexation.

* * *

Foyi could barely think straight as she leaned against Rayf's shoulder. Her feet felt as though GNK Power Droids had been tied to them, and she was certain that she was moving about as fast as the ponderously slow automata. Her ability to draw on the Force to restrain the jabbing arcs of pain crawling through her body, the aches and soreness of her muscles and bones that had been so savagely beaten by Koreb Sott, had diminished to the point of nearly nonexistence. She reached out to its calming waters, practically begging for it to wash over her with healing energies and rejuvenation, just enough to keep her walking. But she had already surpassed her limits several minutes ago, and the effort required to stride into battle and interrogate Yuelo had completely drained what remained of her energy. She heard Rayf murmuring something to her, which was meant to be comforting if she heard correctly, but it sounded as though his voice was coming from an impossible distance, distorted by space and time. She turned her head slowly to look at him, the motion seemingly taking days to complete, but all she saw was a dark smudge that could have been his face, with eyes like black pits of glistening liquid swimming back and forth across her vision. Those eyes seemed concerned, and a maw opened in that smudge, a hole that formed words that slithered into her ears like seeking, crawling kouhuns. "Foyi? Foyi?! Stay with me, kid!"

Foyi tried to mutter a false assurance that she was fine, that she just needed a little help moving faster, now that they knew where to look for Tama. Felucia. It was a name she had never heard before, a planet she knew nothing about. She wanted to ask him about the planet, what they might expect once they got there, how long they would have to be in the discombobulating miasma of hyperspace before they reached their destination. But her tongue was numb and unwieldy in her mouth, slipping past her lips and producing only saliva and inarticulate sounds. She gasped loudly as agony shot through her, and unbidden, her legs buckled beneath her, dragging Rayf down to the floor with her, as he was surprised by her sudden collapse. She could hear him calling her name, could feel his hands reaching down to her arms, sides, her face, but all these sensations came slowly and with great detachment, like she was a dissociated observer within her own body. Rayf's amorphous face slithered into view, a blur of black eyes and flapping jaws. "Foyi!" he cried, anguish apparent in his voice, even as dissonant as it had become. "Foyi! Come on, sweetheart, work with me here! We're almost there; stay with me!"

Foyi no longer felt the pain that had suffused her body only moments before, but a comforting, sleepy stupor was settling upon her mind and body. She was becoming completely numb, and she embraced it, having spent so much time exhausted and in pain she saw it as a far better alternative. Rayf said something else with great urgency, but she did not even try to make it out as she let the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness envelop her and plunge her beneath dark waves of sleep.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Tama awoke with a start, her eyes blinking rapidly but seeing little in the dark. She craned her stiff and sore neck back and forth as she let her eyes readjust to the gloom, taking in the tiny, underground room with its single set of stairs ascending to the unseen upper floors, the empty crates, and bulbous growths of mold and fungus creeping across the floors and slowly lessening the integrity of the walls and the supports of the chamber. She shifted from where she had been leaning against the cool metal of one of the crates, and felt an awkward weight at her side, sliding slightly against her as she moved her own weight about. She looked to the side and down to find Nuri had fallen asleep tucked against Tama's malnourished ribs and bony arm, lost in deep sleep and snoring softly, most likely the first time she had been able to sleep properly since her kidnapping. Tama felt a momentary twinge of annoyance when she recalled that Nuri had promised to stay awake and keep watch over their hiding place, lest more predators or droids discover them. But Tama admonished herself for such thoughts; Nuri had to be as exhausted as she was. In fact, it was likely that Nuri experienced the stress and weariness invoked by the horrendous events of the past week or so more acutely than the Twi'lek did, for Nuri did not have the limitless potential energy source of the Force to draw upon for needed strength and refreshment. Though Tama did possess this ability, she had found it greatly diminished by her own ordeals, and the sorry state her physical form had been reduced to.

Gently, Tama slid out from under Nuri's lightweight mass and helped her fall softly to the floor. She stood slowly, stretching the tightened, sore muscles in her knees and legs, and carefully tested her limbs, determining after a few moments of stretching that they were still serviceable, if weak. She looked back to where she had been seated and saw the vibroknife lying on the floor where she had left it, and gingerly picked up the weapon, turning its bloody blade over in her hands with apprehension. The Nautolan boy's face flashed through her mind, as well as the crazed expression Memmifratus had given her when he had demanded the return of his murder weapon, only moments before the boma had ripped a fatal chunk out of his skull. Tama shivered, wishing she could toss the blade away and never see it again, but realizing that as of now, it was the only weapon she and Nuri possessed. Though she doubted it would do much against an acklay. Or droids.

Cautiously, Tama reached out to the Force, letting her senses expand and take in more information than Twi'lek evolution had naturally intended. The Dark Side was still strong on this world, still whispering to her in a manner more subtle but no less pervasive than the mad ramblings of the being who called itself their "Savior". She could feel living things moving about above their heads and through the dirt beyond the permacrete walls containing herself and her friend, could see them shining like strobing lumas in the Force, the edges of their light tinged with the foul taint of the Dark Side, the infection she could neither quantify nor explain. Some of those lights were large enough she could hear the sound their footfalls made as they strode across the ground, could feel their hunger for fresh meat, for fearful prey as a gurgling complaint in her stomach. The monsters were still out there, still searching amongst the ruins above and below, as trapped by the cage of ray shields as she, Nuri, and the rest of the children were. She wondered how large the cage actually was, what the perimeters and extent of the ray shields were that hemmed them in, though she could not sense that with the Force, save for a dull vibration on her skin telling her that the ray shields were still active, somewhere far above her head. She began looking for more intelligent sentience, for the localized miasmas of fear that might signify the other children, and with some exhausting levels of concentration, she felt some of the presences she sought, no more than a few hundred meters or so away, huddling together in small groups, attempting to stay out of sight of the creatures prowling the night.

Tama's concentration was broken by a loud _clang_ directly above her head, sounding without warning and frightening her enough to cause her to drop into a crouch. She listened intently, and heard other noises, the sound of something metal moving in rhythmic fashion on the floor above. It took her a moment to recognize the noises as those of footsteps, though she could not account for the metallic sound of the feet above. Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, Tama crept to the staircase and tentatively crawled up the steps, coming to the hinged trapdoor that would allow her to exit the small storage cellar. She tested the trapdoor's weight by nudging it gently with her hand, and when it did not immediately budge, she pushed harder, the trapdoor rising by mere centimeters, allowing dim light to filter into the cellar that still managed to dazzle her eyes, despite the low luminosity.

The Twi'lek kept the trapdoor barely open, producing a sliver of space through which she could see no more than four centimeters. She peered through the crack, allowing her eyes to adjust, and extended her senses again, calling upon the Force, though it was becoming far more difficult than even a few moments before. Beyond the trapdoor was a room of nondescript purpose, as most of the floor and walls were covered in spores and mold colonies spreading wherever they pleased, growing out of the detritus of a collapsing building, as well as the discarded parts from unidentifiable machinery and discarded blasters. She could just make out the edge of an open doorway leading into another room, but could see nothing of that room's interior through the gloom and haze of spores. There must have been a difference in air pressure between the room above and the cellar below, for suddenly spores wriggled into her nostrils and the back of her throat, forcing her to slap her hand over her nose and mouth before she coughed or sneezed. She paused there for what seemed like an eternity, waiting, listening, so long she began to wonder whether she had imagined the footsteps. If she was finally losing her mind due to the horrid experiences visited upon it.

Then the sound echoed in the room beyond again, and metallic feet came into view, feet crafted from alloys, moved by servomotors and artificial joints. Feet that belonged to droids. She let the trapdoor lower a centimeter or two as she recognized the muddy brown feet of B1 Battle Droids, two of them followed by a third set of feet, these being a darker gray that may have had a duranium finish at one point in the past, belonging to the frame of a B2 Super Battle Droid. They strode purposefully past her hiding place, pausing to speak to each other at the periphery of her vision. Their voices were thick with static, but they were not so distorted that they had lost the tinny, almost comical sound to their vocabulators, as if their voices belonged to humanoids used to oxygen respiration who had been breathing in helium for too long.

"The Commander said there were two miniature organics somewhere in this building," the first voice said, its voice lilting slightly due to a malfunctioning vocabulator.

"I see nothing so far," came a response in a similarly strange tone. "No sign of small footprints. I don't think they came this way."

"You don't get to do the thinking," replied a third voice, this one slightly more guttural but still possessing that annoying singsong quality. "That's the Commander's purview. You go where the Commander tells you, and if he says there are two juveniles here, then we look until we find them."

"Roger, roger," answered the first two voices in eerie unison.

Still holding her breath, Tama began to creep back down the stairs, trying to completely close the trapdoor and hoping that the entrance to the storage cellar would be concealed from the droids' regard. But as she did so, her foot slipped on the stair directly below it, and her boot clanged against the metal with a sharp, reverberating echo that made her heart jump into her throat. She froze, her blood thumping loudly in her ears, the trapdoor still open a couple centimeters, for to her the sound of her boot striking the metal step had rang like the cacophonous echo of a blaster bolt. The feet of the droids, which had been milling about just on the edge of her range of vision, suddenly stopped moving, and one of the battle droids squawked, "What's that?"

Tama waited while the droids stood unnaturally still, undoubtedly sweeping the immediate area with their sensors. She prayed to whatever divine power might be listening that their sensors were as faulty and unreliable as their vocabulators apparently were. Several silent heartbeats passed, then the lower voice replied to the battle droid's query, managing to sound annoyed in the process. "That? That's nothing. Get back to work."

As their feet began moving about again, Tama let the trapdoor close softly, then practically slithered down the stairs, making as little noise as possible as she crouched at Nuri's side. The Zabrak girl was still sleeping soundly, and while the vocalization of her snores had been mildly comforting before, Tama winced upon hearing them, afraid that the droids might be drawn to the trapdoor because of Nuri's slumber. Tentatively, she poked Nuri's shoulder until the girl began to stir, her snores ending with a choking gasp that caused her to sit bolt upright, her expression twisted into a grimace of panic as her head whipped back and forth in alarm. "Wha-?"

Tama hurriedly put a finger to the Zabrak's lips, then pointed to the ceiling above them with her free hand. Nuri listened, her eyes opening wide in terror when the sound of one of the droids stumbling over something caused a loud _bang_ directly above their heads. Tama removed her finger and leaned in close, whispering hoarsely under her breath, so that Nuri had to lean closer in order to hear. "There are three droids in the building above, looking for us. Sent by that _sleemo_."

Nuri slowly rose into a crouch, cringing as pain lanced through her weary legs. She glanced up the stairs, then furtively back at the Twi'lek, her voice responding with a panicked hiss. "What do we do?"

Tama bit her lip in thought. Had the droids been organic, she may have been able to use the Force to hide herself and Nuri as they attempted to flee the building, though she doubted in her ability to muster that much Force power in her current state. She glanced about the room, looking for other exits they might take that would not require them having to confront the droids, for the only weapon available to them was the vibroknife tucked in her belt, and it was unlikely to be of much use against the battle droids' armored carapaces. The only entrance, and therefore the only exit, from the storage cellar was the staircase that led into the same room the droids were searching. Even almost two decades after the official end of the Clone Wars, Battle Droids were still considered to be some of the most inane and ridiculous machines of war invented, but she doubted even they were stupid enough to not find the trapdoor given time. Time they did not have, for it seemed likely, judging by the droids' brief conversation, their kidnapper was able to better pinpoint their location, given enough time and lack of movement on their part.

Tama crouched back beside Nuri again, making a decision even though she hated the idea. "We don't really have a choice," she whispered. "We have to take the stairs, and run as fast as we can out of this building, then find cover."

Nuri gave her a look that was a cross between disbelief and anger. "That's not a plan, Tama. That's a sprint straight into suicide."

"We don't have a choice, Nuri," she retorted angrily, but careful not to let her voice rise with her emotion. "If those droids find that door before we make a move, they'll block our only exit and we'll be in a killbox just waiting to be vaped. We plot a course out of here now, or we die."

Nuri gave her an enraged expression, but she was more fearful than angry, and after a moment, she nodded. Tama said no more, drawing the vibroknife and flicking the vibration cell on, producing a barely-perceptible hum. She did not believe that the blade would actually do anything to the droids, but just holding it in her fist gave her a small measure of comfort. They crouched at the bottom of the stairs, waited for the ringing thumping of the battle droids' feet passing the trapdoor, then slunk up the stairs until they were just beneath the door. Tama reached out a grimy hand and slowly inched the door open a sliver, but no matter how long she peered, she could not see any feet or legs of droids. Tama looked back at Nuri, but the Zabrak shook her head; she could not see anything either. Tama risked opening the trapdoor a little wider, beginning to hope that the droids had left the room, and perhaps the building entirely.

There was a burst of static, and one of the whiny voices exclaimed curiously, "Hey! What's that?"

Tama and Nuri needed no further bidding, as Tama shoved hard against the trapdoor, causing it to fall against the floor behind them with a immense clang of metal. Barely had the portal been opend did the two girls race up the stairs and take off running into the room beyond, sprinting over detritus and fungus with wild abandon. Tama shifted her flight to the side, allowing Nuri to take the lead as they passed through the doorway into another room full of spores, debris, and discarded droid parts. These were all the details Tama had time to take in, for Nuri was already leading them toward the exit that would take them outside and back into the ruined city's exterior. Tama could not sense the droids still in the room behind them, but she heard their echoing strides, and the retort of blaster rifles echoed painfully in the confined spaces; a beam of red energy lanced within centimeters of her _tchin_ , close enough for Tama to feel the superheating of the air as it passed her by. The pair continued running as fast as their short, exhausted legs could carry them, bursting through the sliding door that stood slightly ajar due to jammed servos, and out into the humid, musky night air beyond. Tama glanced about, taking in the dark silhouettes of bunkers, apartment complexes, dead power generators, local businesses, and towering edifices that eclipsed the night sky, but nothing looked familiar to her. She had been in a stupor when Nuri had discovered this hiding place, so it was more than likely the Zabrak had taken them to a part of the city she had not visited yet.

Nuri paused, gasping and heaving from the exertion upon her exhausted form the short sprint had elicited. "Which...way...now?"

Tama similarly felt out of breath, but she called upon the Force to sustain her, to keep her upright and breathing properly. "I...don't know. You're the one who brought us here; did you see any other hiding places on your way to the building we just left?"

Nuri whirled on her. "I was trying to get us away from the bomas while carrying your stupefied ass! I wasn't exactly stargazing!"

Tama heard a distinctive "Roger, roger" filtering through the broken windows of the building they had just left; they had run out of time to argue. Without looking to see if the Zabrak was following her, she picked a random direction and began running, angling her flight for a low edifice that looked to have once been a hangar for speeders. She heard Nuri's soft, padding steps behind her, and they skittered over the mud and colonies of mold as they drew within the inky shadows cast by the hangar's exterior. Tama could barely see through the blackness of the shadows, her low-light vision not able to fully compensate for the depth of night surrounding the structure, but she was able to make out the entrance, barred by a rectangular blast door that presumably retracted into the side or ceiling of the building, accessible by a keypad along its edge that had seen damage from blasters. Tama trotted around the edge of the building, Nuri gasping beside her, and looked for another entrance, which she found on the far back corner of the edifice, which had crumbled into dust and ragged slabs of duracrete, probably the result of some sort of explosive or otherwise destructive event. Several stalks of the bulbous species of fungi spiraled and curled about the opening, suffusing soft blue and yellow glows that provided an eerie illumination, without which Tama may not have even seen the deeper darkness of the rent in the wall. She waved Nuri forward, and they slunk to the opening, risking a peek inside, but seeing nothing in the vacuous blackness filling its interior. They glanced out at the street, and saw the trio of droids slowly marching down the street in a sweeping pattern, moving in the general direction they had taken, approaching the hangar, looking for signs of movement or tracks they could follow. Without further hesitation, the two girls plunged into the darkness of the hangar.

Nuri and Tama immediately dropped into a crouch and waited for their eyes to adjust to the gloom, thick with humidity and errant clouds of spores, making the interior of the hangar moist, cloying, and unnaturally warm in comparison to the cool night breeze. The hangar was not overly large, consisting of a single room filled with equipment and tools designed for the refueling and maintenance of speeders and hovercraft of a variety of sizes. There were only a few models of speeders still sitting amidst the thick streaks of dust and settled layers of spores, none of which looked to be in any working order, their repulsorlifts slicked with mold, fungal strands and fronds emerging from the deteriorating upholstery of their seats. Tama was able to identify most of the models with a tiny measure of personal pride, seeing a Tsmeu-6 Wheel Bike lying on its side next to a few STAPs that had definitely seen better days, one of which had been sliced in half by something that left an eerily clean line across the lower portion of its chassis. And on the far end of the hangar, shoved against the closed blast doors as though it had been unceremoniously thrown there, was a wreck of burned repulsorlifts, armor, and equipment racks that may have once been a Trade Federation Troop Carrier, though she could not be certain due to the advanced state of its deterioration. Lining the walls were hewn and blasted droid parts, as well as overturned equipment racks, scattered tools, fungal growths, and unidentifiable wreckage. While the majority of the room was wide open, there was enough debris present to break any sightlines, and provide numerous hiding places, if needed.

Tama and Nuri slowly crept along the perimeter of the hangar, keeping to one wall. The Twi'lek closed her eyes for a moment, blocking out the distractions of sight and tuning out the sounds of jungle wildlife, the distant shrieks and roars of hunting predators. She called upon the Force again, keeping her awareness focused and small, lest she be overwhelmed by the sickening undercurrents of twisted life energies that appeared to permeate this world that Nuri was convinced was the Demon Moon of Onderon. Just as she suspected, she could taste something cold and bitter on her palate, smell sweat and unwashed bodies though she was not close enough to naturally scent such a stench. One of the groups of frightened, tortured children were using this hangar as a hiding place as well. Tama opened her eyes to see that Nuri was moving deeper into the hangar, slowly approaching the overturned wreckage of the Wheel Bike with mild interest, perhaps trying to discern what the moldering pieces of circular metal had once constituted. Tama crept up behind her and put a hand to her shoulder; the Zabrak turned to her with a question in her eyes, and Tama leaned forward and whispered in her ear. "There are some more kids in here with us. They're on the other side of the room, hiding under that old Troop Transport."

Nuri gave her a skeptical glance. "How do you know that? I don't hear anything."

Tama made a motion at the air, referencing a concept rather than any particular object. "The Force tells me. They're just as frightened as we are, and liable to lash out like Memmifratus did. We should approach carefully, and try not to make enough noise to attract the droids' attention."

Nuri looked back to the collapsed section of wall through which they had entered, the only exit from the room as far as they could tell. The only sounds winding into the space from there were those of the night, the chittering of small creatures, the soft breath of wind, and the echoing calls of the predators hunting the ruins. No sound that filtered through that opening sounded like metal or static, which probably meant the droids were not near at the moment. "Or we could leave them alone. They'll probably make a lot of noise if we talk to them, which will draw the droids here. This place is another killbox waiting to happen, Tama. We should just leave them and hope the droids go after them instead of us."

"I thought you wanted to help me get as many of the other prisoners out of here as possible."

"And I thought you like living. Sometimes personal survival means others die."

Tama was taken aback by the callous response, though even she had to admit that Nuri was only voicing thoughts she had had herself. Tama shook her head, denying such thoughts from gaining purchase in her mind. "It doesn't have to be that way, Nuri. We can be better than that. If all we think about is our own survival, then the psychopath who put us here gets exactly what he wants." Even as she said the words, she felt an oily, violating tendril writhing in her brain. She had gone so long without feeling the presence of the madman who had imprisoned them that his reemergence was like a shock from a forcepike, staggering her back on her haunches. The voice said nothing at first, simply making a low, droning humming in her brain that set her teeth on edge and arced pain through her temples, before finally speaking a simple phrase. _Pretty Tama. Clever Tama. Dark Tama._

Tama put a hand to her forehead, feeling nauseous, then gazed at the Zabrak, who had gone pale as the voice spoke its own private message to her. "Son of a barve," Nuri cursed under her breath through gritted teeth. "He's back."

Tama waited for the pain and the pressure in her skull to subside, then came back up into a crouch, breathing a sigh of relief. The kidnapper's regard was no longer on her, though this was not necessarily a comfort. Tama ground her teeth together to bring her bearing back to the present, then whispered, "He knows where we are now. We need to hurry and get the other kids out of here, or we're all vape bait."

Nuri sighed, but offered no further disagreement. The two girls crept swiftly to the collapsed Troop Transport, and as they drew closer, they heard indistinct whispers from multiple sources, denoting four other beings hiding in the shadows beneath the wreckage of the vehicle leaning against the blast doors at an angle. Tama and Nuri silently moved to the very edge of the vehicle's perimeter, where they could see the dark space the children were hiding in, but not the children themselves. They were still whispering, but it was merely indistinguishable sounds and syllables Tama was unable to hear unless she used the Force to sharpen her auditory senses. She cleared her dry throat, and softly called into the darkness, "Hello?"

The whispers ceased immediately, replaced by absolute silence. Tama took a risk and slowly crept into view of the space; she could not see anyone in the darkness beneath that haphazard overhang, though she was fairly certain whoever was in there could see her. She kept her hands wide, her expression inviting, her stance loose so that she might spring back if anyone tried to attack her in fear. "Hello?" she ventured again, her voice stronger and more confident. "I know someone's in there. It's just me, Tama. Nuri's with me, too."

There was a shuffling noise, and a quartet of faces emerged from the darkness, faces as thin, wild-eyed, and grimy as her own must have been. Three of them were boys, one a Rodian, one a Twi'lek, and the other a Bothan, while the fourth was a Duros girl. They all gaped at her with expressions ranging from open suspicion to outright hostility, and Tama noticed the flash of metal emerging from the darkness as the Rodian thrust something toward her, revealing a tiny, rusty holdout blaster clutched in his lengthy, awkward digits. Tama had no idea where he would have gotten his hands on such a weapon, but assumed that this small group had found one of the supply caches stashed about the ruins, most likely to provide something for the children trapped in this sick game to fight over. She kept her hands up as the Bothan spoke for the group, his voice strangely cultured, enunciating the Basic words coming from his mouth carefully. "We found this hiding spot first," he hissed, his expression grim and threatening. "You can't have it...there's barely enough room in here as it is."

Tama steadied her breath, her gaze flicking between their regards and the end of the blaster barrel aimed at her. She heard Nuri creep up behind her, then give a soft squeak of fear as the Rodian, startled, shifted his aim directly toward her. Tama waved her hand to get their attention again, speaking slowly. "We didn't come to steal your hiding place. We came to help you get out of here. There are battle droids coming to kill us, and we all need to get out of here before they find us."

"No, _you_ need to get outta here," came the Rodian's response, his Basic so heavily accented Tama could barely understand him. "You brought droids to us. Droids after you, not us, so leave."

The Twi'lek boy gave him an exasperated glare. "No, 'the Savior' was just in our heads a moment ago, and now there're suddenly droids in the area, hunting us down? Can't be a coincidence. They're probably here on their master's orders to kill us."

"Exactly," Tama interjected urgently. "We need to get out of here _now_ if we're all going to survive."

The Duros girl chattered something in a language Tama did not recognize, and judging by the looks everyone gave her, it seemed those gathered had difficulty understanding as well. The Duros repeated her phrase more forcefully, at which point the trio of boys looked to Tama and Nuri. "Do you...know what she's saying?"

Tama furrowed her brow. "You don't either?"

"Not a flaming word," came the Twi'lek boy's disgruntled response.

"She's saying we are wasting time by sitting here and arguing," Nuri supplied in barely more than a whisper. "That we should find a better place to hide. At least, that's the gist of it, I think. I'll admit that my Durese is not my strong suit." Even as she said this, though, the Duros girl was nodding emphatically, gesturing outside of the space they all crouched in, to the hangar's greater interior.

"No!" the Rodian boy said more emphatically, his voice rising to dangerous levels. "We safe here, unless they two stay and bring droids here!"

Nuri leaned forward and gave the Rodian a dubious look. "And what happens if they find you in here? You going to shoot them with that peashooter there?"

"Yes!"

Tama leaned in closer, her patience growing thin and her voice becoming strained with fear and urgency. "If we start firing, the droids will know exactly where we are. Our kidnapper's probably already told them where to look, but they won't find us if we're no longer here for them to sniff out with their lifesign sensors. There's only one entrance or exit from this place, and if the battle droids block us off, we'll be trapped in here. This is no longer a safe hiding place; this is a deathtrap."

The four children looked at each other, communicating with their gazes rather than words, and Tama could see an agreement pass between them. They turned to her again, and the Bothan boy, his slick, grimy fur bristling, replied for the group. "You're right. Let's get out of here."

Tama nodded gratefully and turned to lead them out, but the Rodian was speaking, his phlegmy voice angered. "Wait. Why does she lead? She's one who got us in mess in first place. Convinced us all not to do what Savior said."

"The 'Savior' said to kill each other!" the Bothan exclaimed before Tama could attempt to defend herself. "You really want to be a murderer for a few scraps of rotten food, Farr?"

Farr had no time to answer, for Nuri suddenly interrupted the argument and developing conversation, hissing with a mixture of fear and frustration. "We're too late."

The heads of all those gathered slowly peeked out from the alcove provided by the Troop Transport's ruins, gazing out toward the collapsed corner of the hangar. Through that rough doorway marched the same three battle droids that Tama and Nuri had narrowly avoided so far, walking slowly as they spread out, the two B1s working their ways around the walls of the hangar, while the B2 stalked purposefully down the center, simply stepping over or atop any debris in its way. Tama doubted the droids had found their hiding place yet, else they would have converged on the Transport's wreckage in a straight line, firing their blasters as they came. But their search patterns were inexorably taking them toward the blast door, and thus the alcove they used for concealment, and so it would be a matter of moments before the children were discovered. Tama bit back a curse as she slunk back in the shadows, waving the others to accompany her, her mind racing for a plan, a strategy that would get them past the droids without being riddled with blaster burns. She looked to Nuri, at a loss for what they could do, though the Zabrak seemed to be out of ideas of her own.

Neither Tama nor Nuri had sufficient time to consider their predicament, however, as the Rodian boy named Farr took matters into his own hands, standing up without hesitation and squeezing off a wild shot. The flash and noise of the blaster shot was dazzling in the darkness as the entire hangar was illuminated by an emerald flash. Despite the fact that Farr held the holdout blaster in a manner that suggested he had little experience with energy weapons, his shot actually hit the B2 Super Battle Droid where its sternum would have been had it been an organic humanoid. But the holdout blaster, even in pristine condition, did not pack much of a punch at range of any significance, and thus the super battle droid barely moved as the blaster bolt left an ineffectual burn mark on its duranium armor. The battle droids responded as one with an instantaneous flurry of blasterbolts, and the Bothan barely had time to throw Farr to the ground and behind cover as the fusillade slammed into the blast door behind them with an eruption of sparks and screaming metal. Tama and Nuri threw themselves behind the cover provided by a long slab of rusted metal as blasterfire shrieked over their heads, splashing against the blast door in a crimson storm.

Both the Bothan and the Twi'lek boys were screaming in rage at Farr, but Tama could not hear their angry words over the din of the suppressing fire the droids laid down. The Duros girl had scrambled into the darkness of the alcove and was refusing to emerge again. Tama cowered, covering her ears with her hands and willing the droids to simply go away, irrationally hoping that if she made herself small enough, they would not find her. She glanced to Nuri, afraid for her wellbeing and state of mind, but instead of cowering, the Zabrak had a determined look in her eyes, an expression of rage etched into her features. She scrambled on elbows and knees to the arguing and shrieking boys, pushed the Bothan out of the way, then landed a solid punch in Farr's face. The strike was not particularly powerful, but it was enough to stun the Rodian, allowing her to wrestle the holdout blaster from his suction-tipped fingers and grip it with her own. She shuffled back to Tama's side, then popped out of cover, holding the blaster in a two-handed grip and bracing her forearms on the metal slab before firing a careful shot. The green bolt struck one of the battle droids in the upper left corner of its chest, causing it to stagger backward, where it tripped over a cluster of scattered wires and tools and fell on its back with an anguished wail. Blaster bolts began to track toward her in response, but she quickly shifted her aim and fired again, her second shot hitting the other B1 in the center of its angular head and blowing the appendage off its scrawny neck. The decapitated stump emitted a shower of sparks as the head spun end over end into the darkness, and the droid collapsed to the floor, its digits twitching as it fully deactivated, triggering a trio of ineffectual bolts into the ceiling. Then the Zabrak threw herself prone behind cover as the super battle droid activated autofire on its wrist blaster and stitched the metal slab full of burns and holes. Tama, who had been in a position to see the shots through a sliver of open space in the wreckage, gaped at Nuri, but if she was impressed with her own accuracy, Nuri did not show it. She merely looked grim.

"Nice shots!" Tama shouted over the cacophony.

Nuri nodded. "As soon as I could hold an object without dropping it immediately, my father made certain I could shoot. But I'm going to need something better than this; I can take out Battle Droids no problem, but this blaster won't even pierce that Super's armor unless it's right on top of us, and we'll be dead at that point."

There was a pause in the fusillade as the Super Battle Droid recharged or refreshed its wrist blaster, while a clanging sound echoed in the hangar as the wounded Battle Droid picked itself off the floor. Nuri braced the holdout blaster on the metal slab again and fired past the B2, striking the Battle Droid still standing upright in the lower part of its chest and knocking it over again, though the shot did not look fatal. She ducked again as the super battle droid refocused its aim and let off another staccato burst of blasterfire, chewing holes in their cover while superheating the metal around it. Tama peered through the gap in the wreckage again, and her regard focused on the remains of the headless battle droid across the hangar, but more importantly, on the blaster lying beside it. It was an A280 Longblaster, in far better condition than the droid that had been wielding it, and a weapon considerably more powerful than the holdout blaster, if she could get to it.

Tama's thoughts suddenly turned to what training she had received in the ways of the Zeison Sha, and she gritted her teeth as she struggled for concentration. She turned to Nuri, ignoring the screams of the other children, the echoing impacts of blasterbolts striking the blast door, the metallic stomps of the Super Battle Droid striding toward their place of cover. "Can you keep the big droid distracted? I'm going to try and get you a better weapon."

Nuri grimaced, looking down at her puny weapon with disdain. "I can try. What're you going to do?"

"Facilitate," was all she answered, recalling the words Foyi had imparted to her in the exercise with the stone and hoop. She wormed her way around the cover, keeping her body hidden, but giving her a direct line of sight to the battle droid's blaster rifle. Her right hand stretched out as blaster bolts began to crisscross the air beside her, red lights competing with green, Nuri's shots impacting ineffectually with the duranium carapace of the Super Battle Droid. Even as her hand reached, her mind expanded from her body, soaring past its physical constraints and reaching out to the dead droid and the weapon it had dropped. She could feel its cool metal against the palm of her hand, the residual heat suffusing the barrel from when it had been fired, the pinging sound of cooling metal and swirling tibanna gas within its cartridge. The Force was not alive in the blaster, not like the sentient awareness and spontaneity present in living organisms, but it was still present, still a flow of energy connecting the blaster to the floor, to the droid's cold fingers that still gripped its stock, to the permacrete floor and durasteel walls of the hangar. To her own fingertips, reaching into the air dancing with particles of spores, dust, and chemical compounds she breathed to oxidize her blood and body.

 _The blaster wants to come to you. You exist merely to facilitate it._

With a gasp of effort, the Force surged within her, and the blaster pulled itself away from the droid's locked fingers, bouncing and sliding across cracks in the permacrete and scattered refuse, until with a severity that made her weakened muscles ache, slapped into her palm. She suppressed a squeal of glee as she rolled back to the slab, the A280 clutched to her chest as though it were a precious toy or object of emotional comfort. Her roll carried her to Nuri's side, who was crouched behind the slab as red beams of lethal energy passed mere centimeters over the top of their cover. Nuri's eyes opened wide as she saw the blaster rifle in Tama's skeletal hands, and the Twi'lek gave a gasp as she squeaked, "Here!"

Nuri said nothing as she snatched the blaster rifle from Tama's hands, then switched the weapon over to full autofire, murder in her eyes. The Super Battle Droid's fire lessened for a moment as it attempted to reacquire its target, and by the sound of its heavy gait, it had to be within five meters of their hiding place. With a yell of rage and fear, Nuri stood, jammed the large weapon against her shoulder, and unleashed a blinding storm of red light, lasers slashing through the air with an acrid stench of burning ozone. The Super Battle Droid did not even have time to fire as almost a dozen bolts stuttered into its chest and lower torso, the lasers drilling through its aging duranium like a vibroknife through custard bread, practically cutting the droid in half. With a hiss of superheated metal and a squawk of static, the Super Battle Droid toppled backward, showering sparks and chunks of glowing shrapnel; as it struck the ground, something unstable within its inner machinery exploded, spreading a burst of flame and shards of duranium across the intervening space. Nuri waited until the smoke and fire cleared, then fired three more shots into its carcass to make certain it was dead, then shifted her aim to the final B1, which had been slowly picking itself up once more, smoke rising from the pair of burns in its chest. It did not have time to raise its own blaster as the A280's hail of blasterbolts cut through it, chewing its thin, moldering torso to slag. Nuri waited a moment, seeing if either droid would attempt to rise again, then lowered the blaster rifle wearily, though there was a feral grin on her face as she turned to face the others.

Tama could not suppress a grin, despite the fact that such a fracas would undoubtedly attract more droids to their location, as well as some of the monsters hunting them. The four other children seemed completely bewildered, alternating their stares of disbelief between Tama and Nuri. The Duros girl babbled something that sounded barely intelligible, even in Durese, but it was the Bothan's voice that spoke the first Basic question. "Who...who the hell are you girls?"

"Sick of this bantha _poodoo_ , that's who," Nuri replied, slinging the blaster rifle over her back. She clambered over the metal slab, careful not to touch the still-smoldering blast points across the durasteel, and trotted over to the body of the other B1 Battle Droid. She hoisted the weapon it had been carrying, and grimaced to see it was a Clone Wars-era E-5 Blaster Rifle; she trotted back to their hiding place and offered the weapon to the Twi'lek girl, who smirked as she accepted it.

"I see how it is," Tama grumbled, inspecting the scraped and scarred carbine. "I get you the good weapon, and you give me the slag one."

"It's not slag," Nuri assured her. "Just don't fire it too quickly if you don't want to burn your fingers." The Zabrak then turned to the Bothan boy, offering him the holdout blaster, which he took after a moment's hesitation, still staring at her as though she were a freak of nature. Nuri brought the A280 to bear again and bit out in a weary tone, "We need to get moving. Anything moving in this city would have heard all the noise, and more droids will be here soon, if not more acklays, bomas, and who knows what else. We need to be gone before they do."

"It's not safe with you," Farr replied, managing to look both angry and sheepish at once. "The Savior will know. He will be angry, and will come for the two of you."

The Twi'lek boy punched him on the shoulder to snap him out of his suspicious reverie. "They're also the only ones of us with blasters. We stick with them, they can actually shoot back, so we have more of a chance with them than without them." He stepped past Farr, then offered his hand to Nuri and Tama in turn. "I am Otar. This is Farr and Fenn, and...well, we're not really certain what her name is."

The Duros girl gave them a look that Tama was fairly certain was one of derision, then pronounced slowly, " _Cyran Viridux_."

Everyone present looked to Nuri, the only one present who claimed to have an inkling of what the girl was saying. Nuri furrowed her brow, then pointed to the Duros in a query. "You're Cyran?"

The Duros sighed, then nodded. Tama stepped closer to the group, clutching the E-5 to her chest, her body quivering with a mixture of fear and adrenaline. "As great as it is to be properly introduced," she hissed, her eyes darting to the collapsed section of wall that represented their only means of escape from the hangar, "Nuri's right. We really need to move." Without waiting to see if they were following, Tama hefted the blaster as though it were a lifeline, then began moving as quickly and quietly as she could toward the ruined section of wall. She heard the sounds of many feet, and the groaning complaints of Farr, immediately behind her. Together the group climbed over the wreckage of speeders and droids, following her lead. Tama forced herself to keep moving, despite the leaden weights of her legs, the exhaustion and starvation permeating her body trying to slow her down, even drop her in her tracks. She called upon the Force again to sustain her, reaching out into the immediate vicinity with her senses, sharpening them acutely. If she had not done so, she would not have heard the echoing, metallic sounds of automated feet marching across broken permacrete, the sound coming from just ahead of them and from somewhere within meters of the ruined wall. Tama skidded to a halt and felt Nuri collide with her back, then nearly fell over when the others similarly jostled the Zabrak. There was a chorus of grunts and protests, but Tama spun around and began shoving them back, whispering, "Go back! Get to cover! The droids are already here!"

The children all hustled to several different spots of cover, hiding behind chunks of durasteel and permacrete debris, crouching behind collapsed and ruined speeders. Tama swept over to the right, using a STAP covered in mold and fungal stalks to brace her blaster against, while Nuri moved to the left, using one of the torn circles of clawed metal from the Wheel Bike for her own spot of cover, aiming her blaster rifle at the rent in the hangar's wall. The Bothan boy, Fenn, crouched beside a cowering Farr, a defiant but anxious Otar, and Cyran, who had curled into a fetal position and seemed to completely withdraw into herself. The children waited as the first sounds of the droids' marching stomps became audible to those without enhanced sensory perception. Nuri was the first to begin firing, as her vantage point afforded her a direct line of sight through the hole in the wall, bright lasers lancing through that opening from her blaster and the sounds of impacts upon metal armor echoed within the chamber. Nuri ducked behind cover as retaliatory shots answered her own, and Tama gripped her blaster rifle tighter as she waited breathlessly for the first droids to appear. Her vision blurred for a moment as she felt a wave of weariness sweep over her, and she drew on more Force energy to combat it, to keep her upright and aware. Now was not the time to let the strain on her body get the best of her, and she refocused her vision just as a pair of rusting and blaster-pitted B1 Battle Droids strode through, their blasters and the storm of fire they poured into Nuri's position lighting the entire hangar with competing, jagged shadows and crimson bursts of light that dazzled her eyes, the smoke and lasers making it difficult for her worn vision to see clearly. When Tama aimed, the motion was less due to looking down the weapon's sights, and more feeling where the enemy would be. Nuri was pinned behind cover for fear of the heavy fire coming from the pair of droids, but she gained a reprieve when Tama's own fire lanced through the battle droids, burning holes through their chassis before they had even sensed her presence. Fenn similarly fired a trio of shots, though only one of his bolts actually connected with his target, and the battle droid he hit collapsed, though this had more to do with the laser that Tama had drilled through its upper chest.

Nuri gained the reprieve she needed to peek over her cover again, brace her rifle, and began firing through the doorway as more unseen enemies moved into her sights. A tempest of laserfire emerged from the ruined wall in response, revealing the existence of multiple blasters set to autofire just outside, and Nuri rolled to a larger and more encompassing section of cover, where she hunched down as the blasterbolts tracked her movements and kept her pinned. Nuri looked across the hangar, caught Tama's gaze, and yelled over the screams of sustained fire, "They're Supers!"

Tama gritted her teeth, willing herself to call upon more of the Force, to reach to depths she had never before obtained and to expand herself so far past her physical limitations, she might be able to wield the Force in some spectacular way to combat the overwhelming assault arrayed against them. But she found her control lacking, her focus weak, and the Force, despite being so alive, so rampant, and so tainted on this planet, did little more than make certain she could continue standing without collapsing. Deeper shadows darkened the ruined doorway, and the dull gleam of duranium figures could be seen as three B2 Super Battle Droids filed into the room. Fenn began firing as quickly as possible, his emerald bolts making tinny pinging noises on the droids' outer plating, proving to have little effect other than to draw the droids' tracking. The Bothan barely threw himself prone behind cover before the super battle droids lit that whole area up with blaster bolts and explosions of laserfire, causing Farr, Otar, and Cyran to shriek in terror, but giving both Nuri and Tama time to extricate themselves from cover and catch the cluster of droids in a crossfire. Two of Tama's bolts burned through the upper portion of a super battle droid's chest, and it swung its wrist blaster to open fire on her, only to be cut down at the knees by Nuri's flurry of bolts. One of the droids turned to Nuri's position, while the other aimed at Tama, but they were old and hampered by worn, rusting servos, so they could not make snap about-faces like they had once been able to. Both Tama and Nuri took advantage of this, keeping heavy sustained fire on both droids, until their caustic lasers literally chewed the droids to pieces, scattering shards of white-hot shrapnel across the ruined hangar's floor.

An eerie silence descended upon the hangar for a moment, punctuated by the hiss of cooling metal and the frantic, frightened breaths of the survivors. Tama listened intently to the Force, ignoring the calls from the other children who were concerned for each others' wellbeing. There was a bitter taste growing in the back of her throat, becoming something foul and indescribable at the same time discordant music began to drum in her ears, syncopated with the beat of her own hammering heart. It was her danger sense rising, the Force warning her that something bad was coming for them, something they had little chance of surviving if they did not find a more defensible position. She leapt up from her spot of cover, ignoring the pain shooting through her legs as she did so, and yelled across the expanse, "We need to keep moving! Nuri, are we clear?"

Nuri looked as though she were about to yell an affirmative, slowly coming to a standing position, but then the notes in Tama's ears, the acrid scent in her nostrils, and the bitterness on her tongue worsened sharply, and she already knew the Zabrak's response before she said anything. "We've got incoming!" Nuri shouted as she dived back behind the rubble she was using for cover. Tama rolled back to her own position a moment before a quartet of droids rushed through the jagged opening in the wall, three of which were super battle droids, the one bringing up the rear a simple battle droid with a carapace so corroded by fungus and water damage, it looked like a shambling, humanoid collection of spores and local flora. These droids' tactics were more intelligent, as they swept through the opening two abreast, instead of single file like the previous group, already laying down suppressing fire that swept in concentric arcs across the hangar's interior space, forcing Nuri, Fenn, and Tama to remain behind cover or be pulverized by laserfire. The resultant cacophony was horrifying, the sounds of lasers splashing across metal and permacrete and the ponderous clanking of droid steps promising impending death mixing with the screams of fright and fury from the children.

Tama closed her eyes, trying to refocus, recenter herself, trying to pluck up the courage to try and lean from cover and fire back at the droids attempting to kill them. She cast a glance across the hangar to Nuri, who seemed to have courage to spare, standing for just long enough to unleash a slew of blaster bolts, chewing at the armor of one of the super battle droids but not dropping it before the droids focused their aims on her. Nuri threw herself to the floor, and Tama attempted to take the opportunity to fire back, but she had barely peeked her _lekku_ above the fallen STAP when lasers sliced the air within centimeters of her head. She cursed and looked back to the Zabrak, who met her eyes and shouted, "I'm running low!"

Tama checked the charge of her blaster's own power pack, careful not to touch the superheated surface of the blaster's barrel and chamber. The blaster still had plenty of ammunition available to her, but she did not know how long she could sustain return fire before the weapon became too hot for her to hold. The blaster had obviously been designed for beings that did not mind the heat produced by an E-5, such as droids, though already her palms were slick with sweat, and her hands were beginning to chafe. She saw Fenn risk a shot that whizzed past a super battle droid and impacted with the B1 standing behind, producing a cloud of spores and smoke and stunning the droid, but not destroying it. The super battle droids, however, continued heavy fire on all three of the armed children's hiding places, keeping them behind cover as they continued to advance.

The discordant notes and rancid taste had grown nauseating within her, the Force practically screaming impending danger at her. Tama tried to ignore it, as she was already well aware of the deadly intent of the droids marching across the hangar toward them, when she heard a bone-numbing roar from somewhere outside the hangar, a commotion that veritably shook the walls. All the children heard it, for the vociferation had sent vibrations through the floor at their feet and caused much of the wreckage to rattle noisily. The droids ignored it, continuing to keep their quarry pinned as they marched the remaining few meters to their hiding places. Tama could feel the source of that primal howl, belonging to something immense, a force of nature all its own, a boiling cauldron of primal rage, hunger, and curiosity. Then the din created by the blasterfire was overwhelmed by the sound of something massive striking the outer wall of the hangar, hard enough to make the entire building shake and the ground heave as the walls weakened by past combat and erosion collapsed, gaping fractures spidering out from the ruined opening and causing a huge section of wall and ceiling several meters across to blow inward. The children ducked as shards of permacrete and twisted lengths of durasteel bent inward and rolled about them, slamming against the wreckage and ruins already choking the interior of the edifice. One slab of broken wall sailed through the air and crushed a corroded battle droid, the machine somehow having time to elicit a dismayed wail before being permanently reduced to slag. The edge of that slab caught one of the super battle droids and knocked it spinning to the ground, while the other two still standing turned into the thick cloud of dust and debris to face the new threat. Tama coughed on that dust as it threatened to suffocate her, barely avoiding several jagged slabs of permacrete from descending upon her head. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her eyes of grit as she looked into the swirling dust and saw an enormous shape trudging through the destruction it wrought, hearing the sound of its deep inhalations and snuffling noises. This close to the creature, she could smell its heady, musky scent as an overpowering wave of confusing odors, could taste its thick, fetid saliva and decaying breath as it gaped its maw, hungering for flesh and thirsty for blood. She instinctively scooted back from it as its form began to coalesce in the morass of dust and detritus, and looked on in a combination of wonder and horror as its enormous head leered down upon all those gathered in the hangar, unfortunate enough to be spitted by its baleful gaze.

The creature was an immense, hulking biped of large, humped shoulders crowned with hoary protrusions, from which emerged a thick, stumpy neck almost horizontally from the creature's upper torso. The head that was supported by its neck was large and oblong, describing a blocky face which was dominated by a gaping, lipless maw filled with ragged fangs used undoubtedly for tearing and rending anything unfortunate enough to fall between those powerful jaws. Over the maw was a pair of large slits for nostrils, flanked on either side small, dark eyes that had an unnerving intelligence and predatory intent glinting in their depths. From its shoulders hung lengthy and muscular arms ending in widely splayed claws, while its heaving bulk was supported by legs significantly smaller than its forearms, ending in pachydermic feet that seemed too small to withstand its weight, but propelled it surprisingly quickly across the fragmented floor. Its thick, wrinkled hide was like a sheathe of natural armor over its body, a dark brown in hue, though there appeared to be faded stripes of a phosphorescent pigment scrawled along its limbs, back, and face, as though the creature had allowed someone close enough to splash war paint across its skin. The monster stood well over five meters in height, the ground quivering with each step it took deeper into the hangar, its claws reaching forward in anticipation, attempting to determine which of the many beings in the room it could consume as its potential prey. Tama felt that the creature was familiar to her somehow, as though she had seen it or heard of it before, but in the fright that overwhelmed her just by gazing upon its visage, she could not dredge up any befitting name with which to describe the creature. She continued to scramble backward, propelled by her palms and posterior, as the creature's head slowly turned to look downward and fix its horrid gaze upon her, having chosen her as the first of its prey.

But the Force was kind to her, for even as the monster growled deep in its throat and took a ponderous step toward her, the remaining super battle droids opened fire on the creature, while the third of their number that had been knocked prone began picking itself up. Blaster bolts hammered into the creature's shoulder, neck, and flank with whining reports, and while the beams of energy appeared to do little to harm the creature, it elicited a pained shriek that seemed to split the air itself. Tama threw her hands to her ears, unable to block out the keening wail, and she was certain her eardrums had burst and were bleeding. The droids, not programmed to show fear or concern for their own survival, continued their relentless assault as the creature spun on them and reared back with one of its claws, before striking with a whirling motion that buffeted Tama with the enormous displacement of air. Its claws impacted the two droids still standing and shredded them, hurling their broken carapaces against the far wall of the hangar with a resounding crash, spraying sparks and shards of duranium armor plating. The third super battle droid, because it had still been attempting to stand, narrowly avoided the swing, and began firing blaster bolts, shifting its aim multiple times as it attempted to divine vital areas or weak points on the creature's body, while back up and out of its reach. The creature roared in defiance, and began lumbering toward the droid, its claws outstretched, its body no longer blocking the gaping wound in the hangar's side it had opened in its fury.

Tama saw the only opportunity they may get for escape and desperately scrambled to her feet, hefting her E-5 Blaster Rifle as she did so. She turned to look back into the hangar, then waved and shouted at the other children, screaming over the cacophony of roars and blasterfire, "Come _on_!"

None of them needed any further urging, all jumping to their feet and running as quickly as they could over the debris and wreckage, making for the gargantuan, collapsed section of the hangar, all running in a small huddle to the outside and into the ruined city. They did not look back as the sound of the lone droid's blaster ceased, followed by a small explosion and a pealing roar from the monster that sounded triumphant to Tama. They sprinted as fast as they could across the street outside, then soon lost themselves in a maze of rubble-strewn streets, alleyways, and thin, snaking passages, choked with the debris of the Clone Wars, discarded weapons and armor pieces, and the mildewed and carbon-scored shells of vehicles of both civilian conveyance and military application. The roars of the monster they had left behind thundered through the air behind them, but they were rapidly fading as the children had lost the predator intent on consuming them. However, roars and shrieks from other creatures of similar size and temperament could be heard calling through the night in answering vociferations, challenges, and exaltations. Tama continued to lead their slowing charge through the wending paths of the ruined city, though she had no idea where she was leading them, and knew that none of them could keep up this breakneck speed for much longer.

The Twi'lek turned down an alleyway and trotted to the end, calling a halt with an upraised palm behind her. Something had prickled her senses, though she did not feel the alarm she would have if the Force was attempting to warn her of something deadly ahead. She peered out from the shadows of the alley as she felt Nuri and Fenn draw to either side of her, peeking past her shoulders. The alley cut between two large apartment complexes that appeared to have been converted to military strongpoints or command posts before being subsequently abandoned or routed, facing a wide open place that may have once been a permacrete sea of monuments or markets, but was now cluttered with rubble and a veritable jungle of fungus, much of it suffusing the area with soft blue, yellow, and aquamarine glows. In the center of the space was a small but sturdy structure of durasteel, appearing to be a bunker of sorts protected by blast doors and battle droids walking about in programmed, circuitous patrol routes. From the roof of the bunker protruded a large dish, rising vertically, with a slight, pulsing light emitted from the antennae arrayed around the dish's circumference. This light rose into the air with bright, twisting columns of energy that became less substantial the higher they rose, until they dissipated into a barely-perceptible field of purple-tinged energy, enfolding the upper tiers of the buildings around and spreading far out of sight to encompass an unknown area of the city. There was a faint hum in the air, and Tama could feel the skin on her face and _lekku_ stimulated by vibrations she was barely aware of, as though a stiff and frigid breeze were washing over her skin. She gave a shiver as she looked at the machinery and the droids that guarded it, well over a dozen in number and heavily armed with modern blaster rifles and disruptors.

Nuri gasped in awe by her side, and whispered hoarsely, "Tama...this is it. This is the ray shield generator."

Tama gazed at the bunker with renewed interest. This had been the goal she had set for herself and all others she could possibly save from this death game, and they had just happened to stumble upon it through seeming coincidence. Perhaps the Force truly was with her. Farr shoved his snout against Fenn's side and squawked in his thick, whining voice, "Who gives a flying mynock? We need new place to hide, before droids spot us staring like scared nerfs."

Otar sidled up, keeping his voice lower and more measured comparatively, but still as fearful. "He's right. Whatever it is we found, we need to get away from here before those droids find us with their sensors."

"No," Tama replied in a tone that brooked no argument. "We need to keep this place in sight, lest we lose ourselves in this flaming city. Let's find a defensible position in one of these buildings, preferably with windows we can use to overlook the generator."

Before anyone else could utter a response, Tama turned around and trotted back down the alleyway, looking for doors through which they could access one of the apartment complexes that hemmed in the alley. She found one that appeared to have been an entrance used by employees or servants or droids, and found that the activation panel continued to marginally function, which slid the door open just wide enough for the children's malnourished and thin bodies to slip through. They found themselves in a service hallway, littered with droid parts, spoiled food, unidentifiable refuse, and loose sheets of flimsiplast. They crept through the hall, passing several doors until they found the main lobby of the building, which was little more than a rubble-strewn space of doors, malfunctioning turbolifts, a reception area that had been converted into a comm relay post, and windows that had been blasted and shattered, though the openings were barred by blast shields erected long ago. Tama wanted to get to the upper floors of the apartments, but did not trust the turbolifts, so they inevitably took a set of stairs encased in a cramped space that wound further up into the complex's heights. The stairs were many and shallow, as if they had been built for beings smaller than medium-sized humanoids, and the exhaustion all of them were feeling soon caught up to them as they tromped up the stairs, making their legs feel like rubbery strands of slippery muscle. To their credit, none of the children complained as Tama led them inexorably upward, until they had proceeded well over a dozen floors, and turned through another half-open door onto the floor beyond. The rooms lining the halls of this floor were all abandoned, some still locked tight behind doors that refused to open, while others stood wide and inviting. Tama picked one of the latter at random, and ushered everyone into a series of rooms that held little more than furniture built for diminutive humanoids and the remains of personal effects scattered across the floor. Some of the walls also had circular burn marks where blaster bolts had splashed across the plaster and metal, and one room had been completely gutted by fire, the walls and floor burned and covered in soot. No one seemed to mind their current surroundings as long as they offered at least a modicum of safety, and they all flopped on various pieces of furniture or across the floor, heaving as they tried to catch their breaths.

Tama drug herself over to one of the windows, which still had transparisteel in its frame, and looked down, grinning to herself to see the ray shield generator below. From this vantage point, she saw that there were far more droids than what she had initially seen, and more were coming in pairs, emerging from alleyways surrounding the square to reinforce the guard on the bunker and the deflector dish. Nuri walked to her side and peered down, a shadow crossing her face. "We are so borked if we go for the shield generators now. That _murglak_ probably knows now that we know where it is, so he's going to fortify it past whatever we can do."

Otar stumbled over to them, his _lekku_ twitching in curiosity. "What are you two talking about? What's so important about that bunker down there?"

Tama pointed through the window and down upon the dish below. "That's our navplot out of here. It's what Nuri and I have been looking for ever since we found out this compound is enclosed in ray shields. If we can knock out those generators, we can get out of this twisted arena we've been forced into."

"And do what?" came Fenn's sarcastic response from where he lay gasping on the floor. He rolled onto his side and gave them a hard stare. "Go _where_? There's jungle out there as far as the eye can see, and none of us know what world we're on anyway. Even if we could take out the ray shields—which we can't—we'd get lost in the jungles, where there's undoubtedly more rancors to chase us down."

Tama felt a chill race down her spine. "That's what that thing was, wasn't it? A rancor." She remembered stories Pash had told her regarding rancors, how they were vicious and unusually intelligent beasts that were found on an alarming number of worlds across the galaxy. She had had nightmares after he had told her stories of certain crime lords and Hutts who had predilections for feeding those who angered them to rancors they had managed to domesticate just enough to dispatch their enemies in lively and gruesome fashion.

Nuri nodded, her visage similarly pale. "I hoped I would never have to see one in person. This 'Savior' has gathered quite a menagerie to torment us with. Not that he needs to, considering all the horrible things he could have dredged out of the jungles of Dxun."

"We're on Dxun?" Fenn asked, his voice breaking in fear.

Nuri shrugged. "I think so. I can't think of any other jungle worlds with so many dangerous creatures in one place."

Cyran stood, shaking her head, then babbled a long and complex sentence in Durese. Every eye turned to Nuri, who was concentrating on her words, attempting to discern what she was saying with clarity. When Cyran had finished, Nuri's brows shot up, as though she had come to a sudden revelation. "No, that makes sense, Cyran. Now that you say that, I think you're right." The Zabrak turned to the others, announcing confidently, "Cyran says we're on Felucia. It was an important world during the Clone Wars, held by the Commerce Guild and the site of several major battles due to its proximity to both the Perlemian Trade Route and Shaltin Tunnels, though it's never seen a great amount of civilization or industrialization. If we're truly on Felucia, then escaping into the jungle means wandering through miles upon miles of wilderness."

Tama grunted in irritation. "Would any of you rather stay here, at the mercy of our captor?"

No one answered affirmatively to that question, and Tama returned her attention to the bunker down below. She ignored the dull ache of her unfed stomach, the pain of exertion in her limbs, and concentrated on the shield generators below. It did not really matter to her whether she and the others would be able to escape the planet; all that mattered to her was getting herself and as many innocents as possible outside the ray shields, putting as much distance between herself and the maniac who had brought her here as possible. And that required taking down the ray shield generators, which she had every intention of doing, even if she had to die to do so. As long as it meant the ruination of the psychopath's schemes. She wracked her tired, frazzled mind for a plan, and the only idea that arose was something crazy and desperate, something that was unlikely to work even if she were at full strength in body and mind. She recalled the confusing and exhilarating memories of reaching into the boma's mind, of feeling what it was like to live as an animal, to feel animal desires and instinctual urges, the power it took to bond with the animal and to command it, to bend it to her will. Her thoughts rested on the rancor, and she shuddered as the plan rose to her mind, one so insane, it might actually work. Nuri saw the concentration in her face, and the sudden light of revelation that crossed her expression. The Zabrak leaned closer, concern and excitement evident in her presence. "You have an idea, don't you?"

Tama met her gaze and responded with a grimace. "Let's rest up and regain what strength we can first, then I'll tell you my idea for a plan. I want to think it over first, because no one's going to like it in the slightest, but it might be the only shot we have."


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Foyi awoke slowly, dredging herself up from a dark, formless miasma of memory, supposition, fear, and pain. She felt as though she had been submerged in liquids dark, cold, and viscous, not unlike the sensations that ran through her body when she called upon the Force, but this had been a disparate experience, an entirely different state of mind. She kept seeing recurring images of Tama's face, twisted into a grimace of fear, anxiety, and pain. She always seemed to be directly by Foyi's side, staring at her with eyes shimmering in unshed tears, her mouth forming words that Foyi could never quite discern. She reached for her sister, desperate to grab onto some part of her, to bring Tama close to her and never let her go again. But even though Tama's face floated barely above the ocean of black, turgid waters within centimeters of her own, she could never get a grip upon her, for a rogue current would sweep between them and carry Tama away, further and further into the darkness until she disappeared entirely. Foyi would knife her arms through the waters, praying that she would have the strength to reach her sister, but the waves kept washing over her head, breaking her line of sight, the undertow reaching up with cold, unfeeling fingers and pulling her down into the depths.

It took Foyi an inordinate amount of time to realize that she was awakening, that the frightful dream world she seemed to have spent an eternity in was giving way to reality, a reality that confused her. She became aware that she was blinking her eyes, though the lids felt like durasteel shutters with faulty servos, and in those intermittent flashes between cool darkness and blinding, illuminated details, she expected to see rugged, blaster-scarred stone walls of the tunnels within Resh 9376's bowels. She half-expected to see a Hutt leering over her, Yuelo's infuriated gaze tempered only by an expression of sadism as he considered all the horrid fates he might subject her to. Instead, she was becoming aware, lying on her back, in a room with bright lights and white walls. She flexed her fingers and began to move her hands, and felt the digits close upon folds of cloth instead of smooth or jagged stone. There were blankets or sheets of some kind spread over and under her body, and a soft material she belatedly identified as a pillow beneath her head, her _lekku_ splayed out to either side of her temples. Weakly, she attempted to sit up, grimacing in anticipation of the injuries she was just beginning to remember suffering, only to groan at the severe aches and rigidity in her spine and limbs, aches that were born of recently healed and under-utilized bodily functions and muscles, instead of debilitating wounds, bruises, and fractures. She groaned again as the room began to come into focus, revealing a small chamber with glowstrips and lumas set to a comforting level, only having seemed so blinding before because her eyes had not fully adjusted to the sudden illumination. She was lying upon a modular bed, able to take on multiple configurations to accommodate almost any humanoid species that may require its use. Beside her sat several consoles running medical diagnostics, displaying lifesigns and monitoring medical readings, scrolling by on the myriad screens, and only a moment of focus upon the terminals revealed that the lifesigns belonged to her. That revelation allowed her to jump to the conclusion that she was in some sort of hospital room of a med center, though that did not tell her exactly where she was in the galaxy.

She craned her neck to look to her opposite side, and slouching in a chair beside her, fervently reading from a datapad, was Rayf. He looked tired, disheveled, and his eyes were rimmed in red, as though he had found little sleep. Despite his haggard face, his thin hair was combed and kept well-groomed, and he wore a tunic, vest, sash, and soft pants of immaculately-kept clothing in colors of crimson, silver, and brown that called attention to the composition of the whole outfit and the wearer's attention to coordinated fashion, but were muted enough to not be too obtrusive. A vague memory buried deep in Foyi's subconscious identified the style as Tapani, and the way the cloth was cut suggested that Rayf was a man of great wealth and means. Privately, she thought he looked ridiculous, and in a sudden surge of panic, looked down at her own form, fearful that she had been dressed in something equally outrageous. She sighed almost inaudibly to find her torso covered by a lengthy medical tunic that wrapped about her form in a helical fashion, belted closed by a thin sash that could be undone quickly if need be. She was uncomfortably aware that she wore only a soft pair of undershorts beneath, and pulled the robe about her chest a little tighter in a self-conscious attempt at preserving her modesty, though nothing of her breasts had been revealed as far as she could ascertain.

Rayf's gaze absentmindedly slid up from his datapad, and with a start, he dropped the device and jumped to his feet, both worry and relief starkly warring for dominance upon his facial features. "Foyi! Thank the Force!" He reached down and gripped her hand, and she could feel how badly he was shaking.

Foyi opened her mouth to speak, but her voice failed her, coming out as only a dry croak. Rayf spun around and snatched a plasti-pak from a tray beside her bed, extending a straw from its corner and handing it to her. She hesitantly brought the straw to her lips and partook of the liquid within, finding it to be cool, refreshing water, and she drank deeply of its contents, until the plasti-pak had completely collapsed in on itself from lack of volume and the suction of her lungs. Rayf excitedly took the spent container from her and discarded it on the tray once more as Foyi cleared her throat. Her voice, when it finally emerged, was little more than a whisper, but she was confident in her enunciation. "Rayf? What happened? Are we still in Point Nadir?"

Rayf made a slashing motion with his hand, even though her words had not carried far. "Probably best not to mention where we _actually_ were, Foyi; everyone who needed to know where we come from thinks we're out of Fondor."

Foyi coughed, trying to clear her throat. She eyed Rayf's outfit skeptically. "Thus the getup?"

Rayf looked down at himself, as though he had just noticed he was wearing something beside his worn and bloodied spacers' outfit. He grinned sheepishly. "Tapani fashion. Looks ridiculous, I know, but it also makes me look rich, and between this outfit and a few favors, we were actually able to dock and get you the medical attention you needed. You have to have accounts and assets totaling at least ten thousand creds before they even consider letting you dock here."

Foyi gave him a bewildered look, and glanced about the room, though she saw no viewports or windows that showed the outside. "Where exactly is _here_?"

"We're on the Wheel, one of the greatest gaming and gambling destinations in the whole galaxy," came his response. "Or so all the ads keep telling me and everyone else who moves through this station. Oh yeah, it's a space station, in case you're wondering, where you can win and lose entire fortunes in a single hand of sabacc. Though, like all such places, it's the House that actually wins." Foyi gave him a truly discombobulated look, but he raised his hands to forestall any questions she was undoubtedly about to ask. "We're here because it's about halfway between where we were and where we're heading, and you needed a lot more than a couple medkits and bacta patches."

Foyi rubbed her hands over her face, which felt strange to her, her skin tender, the bones beneath feeling as though they were no longer truly firm but rubbery. Most likely the ghost of painful sensations earned when the Mandallian Giant had struck her multiple times in the face. "How long have I been out?" Though she asked the question, she almost wished he would not answer her, for she knew that no matter what he said, she would dread the response.

Rayf made a show of considering her question. "One or two days?"

"How _long_ , Rayf?"

"Okay, so maybe, by some small chance, it might have been four days. You really needed the rest; I don't think you were getting enough sleep before that Mandallian was busy trying to turn your brains into Deneelian fizz-pudding."

Foyi began trying to lever herself out of bed, kicking the tangled sheets and blankets aside, though her legs felt as though they were experiencing higher gravity than the rest of her body, and thus were not cooperating. She cursed as she did so, muttering, "I've been sleeping too _damn_ long. Tama's waiting for me; she's in pain and terrified, I can feel her..."

Rayf put a calm but firm hand to her shoulder, and though she wanted to fight his grip, she was too weak to do so, and flopped back on the pillows. She turned an angry gaze his way, but the stern look on his face brooked no argument. "Foyi, I want to help Tama, too, and I realize we've lost a lot of time, time that may prove detrimental to us and her. But you couldn't even keep yourself upright, and Felucia is not the kind of world that you can simply sleep your way through. You needed medical supplies and expertise I did not have, or you would have died from your wounds, and that would help absolutely no one. Look, now that you're awake, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure the hospital gets you released, including carrying you out of here while shooting everything that gets in our way, if necessary. I'm sure you think you're ready to go, but you're not back to full-throttle yet, are you?"

Foyi was about to protest, raising her arm to jab a reproachful finger his way, but the motion only served to aggravate the barely healed injuries to her ribs, and she could not stop an agonized gasp from escaping her lips. She grimaced as Rayf gave her a patient, long-suffering glance. "So I'm not back to full strength, okay?" she muttered, more angry with herself than with Rayf, the emotion motivated by her fear for Tama and the ever present awareness of time slipping by, time Tama most likely did not have. She could not ignore the dreams, the hazy images of Tama slipping away into the choppy, turbulent darkness, out of her reach before she could catch hold of her. "But we can't just _sit_ here, Rayf. The Shepherd isn't going to wait for me to get 'full-throttle' again before he, or she, or it does whatever horrible thing they have in mind for Tama. Look, I'm good enough to at least walk...I think. I can do further healing on the way to...Felucia, was it?"

Rayf scrutinized her, then sighed, levering himself out of his seat with a sigh of exertion. "Alright, Foyi. I'll get the doctors to let you out." He strode across the room, then passed through the sliding door and disappeared for several, long moments. Foyi did not remain idle during this time, but instead focused on kicking the rest of the sheets and blankets off her body, then extricating herself from the bed. With a groan, she planted her bare feet on the cold floor and settled her weight upon them, pushing off the edge of the bed and standing upright. Her legs protested and gave out immediately, and she would have sprawled across the floor had the bed not been there to catch onto. She tried again, reaching through the lingering haze of anesthetics and bacta to call upon the Force, and breathed an audible sigh of relief feeling it wash over her, submerging her in its cool and calming waters. The Force filled her limbs and her body, and she felt strength returning to her legs, keeping her upright. She pushed off the bed again, and this time, she remained standing while her senses sharpened, granting her a metaphysical impression of the room. Now she could hear the pervasive humming vibrating through the walls, floor, and ceiling, the exterior sheer created by the revolving space station spinning through the void of space. She could feel countless minds and presences beyond her own, the nearest in various states of pain, comfort, and recovery, while those further beyond were embroiled in emotions of excitement, loss, anticipation, fear, resolve, greed, and borderline hysteria. The avarice, lust, apathy, and affluence here was like a slimy, turgid wave of broiling water catching her full in the face, and she had to steady herself once more as she found a way to arise above it, to insulate herself from the vice that practically dripped from the atmosphere itself.

Foyi was still clearing her head and looking about the room for a change of clothes when Rayf returned through the door, followed closely by a human female with pale skin and short, neatly-kept blond fur upon her head, curling at the ends just above her shoulders. She had an air of superiority and aloofness about her that Foyi instinctively picked up on, as though the woman believed herself to be the most important and interesting person on the entire space station. She was dressed in a lengthy medical smock and jacket that was painfully white, and she carried a medical datapad in her hand, barely looking from it as she entered the room. When her imperious gaze fell upon Foyi, she arched a single, perfectly-sculpted brow in puzzlement. "You're _standing_ already? I hardly find that wise, for someone who was in your condition."

Foyi took a careful step forward. For some reason, it was important to her to show no weakness before this medical professional. "And what condition was that?"

Rayf looked as though he were about to speak, but the doctor answered almost immediately with a sniff, absentmindedly flicking through options on her datapad, as though the conversation with her patient were a mere distraction. "When your...cousin brought you to us, you were nearly catatonic with trauma caused by multiple contusions, lacerations, and minor fractures across much of your upper body cavity and skull. I don't know what kind of wild party or illicit activities you had to be involved in to sustain such damage to yourself, but had you come in for treatment earlier, perhaps you would not have had to remain in these facilities for so long. When you came to the hospital here, the only treatment you had received had been hastily-applied bacta patches and there were enough stims to set a gundark in hyperdrive flowing through your blood. We were forced to do a full bacta immersion to save you and treat your injuries." She gave Rayf a sidelong glance. "And bacta is not entirely simple to come by this far from Thyferra."

Rayf gave her an apologetic smile. "An extravagance for which House Barnaba will be happy to accommodate Wheel Administration and Senator Greyshade for. I'm simply ecstatic to know that our young heiress will survive her unfortunate accident, entirely due to the expert medical attention she had received here."

The doctor continued to give him an evaluative glare, but her expression softened slightly with pride at the flattering compliment. Foyi's eyes flicked to meet Rayf's in bewilderment, and he merely shrugged his shoulders. She noticed for the first time that he was carrying a small bundle in his arms, which she saw were folded sets of clean clothes upon closer inspection. She longed to simply take the garments from his arms, but she had to remain standing and suffer the scrutiny of the haughty doctor, who subjected her to several tests, measurements, and further poking and prodding to evaluate the state of her improving health. When she had completed her physical examination, the doctor seemed skeptical that Foyi was ready to be discharged, though Foyi suspected the doctor could care less whether the Twi'lek dropped dead a meter outside the Wheel's med center, as long as she was no longer taking up space that could be used for other patients. Rayf waited outside during the physical examination, giving Foyi a chance to look down at her mostly disrobed body to see there were only small scars, slight discolorations, and minor abrasions where once she had been bleeding profusely from injuries both on her exterior and upon her internal organs. And though she felt stiff, sore, and rather unsteady with her movements due to abuse and several days' rest, she was beginning to feel vigor return to her form, most of which she attributed to her connection with the Force. The doctor still seemed slightly puzzled, for though the miraculous effects of bacta had aided Foyi in recovering from her injuries, the aftereffects should have been more prevalent than they were. Finally, the doctor gave a shrug, as if the apparent wellbeing of her patient was little concern to her, and said simply, "If you believe you must go rushing off in your current state, then be my guest. I've done all I can for you anyway." And with that, the doctor finally left, and Foyi felt as though she could breathe a little easier.

Rayf walked through the door at the same time the doctor was leaving, and gave her back a disrespectful expression as she walked out, an exaggerated face that made Foyi giggle, despite herself. He offered her the folded clothing, and his grin was practically radiant, almost completely erasing the harried and exhausted lines etched into his face. He was nearly ecstatic to see her on her feet again, and she was uncertain what to feel about this other than gratitude. He left her alone to change, and gratefully she slipped off the medical robes and began to gingerly pull the garments he had supplied her on, a process that was more painful and time-consuming than she believed it would be initially. She was grateful to see that the clothes he had picked out for her were not the flashy and extravagant fashions that Rayf himself was wearing, but were simple and comfortable garments that were well-suited to daily and traveling wear. The clothing consisted of a snug, short-sleeved shirt in a cream tone, a pair of rugged but comfortable brown trousers with pockets along the hips and the sides of the legs, and a hooded jacket that was a size too large for her, a grayish-cream in color, with a zipper down the middle and large pockets over her abdomen. After pulling these clothes on, she padded across the room and found her well-worn boots shoved in the corner, as well as a fresh pair of socks, and had just finished strapping her footwear closed when there was a knock rapping at the metal of her door. "Come in!" she replied, and the door slid open to reveal Rayf again, who was still carrying his datapad. He looked her over as if to assure himself that she was still standing and still breathing.

"Ready to go?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.

Foyi slowly straightened to her full height, and began striding past him to the door. She nodded her gratitude, saying, "Let's go. We've plenty of space to burn yet."

Though Foyi walked through the door ahead of him, she let Rayf take the lead almost immediately, as she had no knowledge of the layout of the space station known as the Wheel, which turned out to be far larger than she had originally anticipated. As they walked out of the med center, Rayf explained the basic structure of the Wheel, which was constructed in a configuration suggested by its name, a central axis from which radiated four spokes supporting a massive ring of superstructures. They were following the curve of that outer ring, where the most noteworthy events and attractions were located in the nearly endless array of casinos, gambling dens, spice pits, pleasure houses, and other forms of entertainment that created a veritable city following the entire circumference around the space station's outer ring. Emerging from the med center embroiled the two of them in lengthy hallways and promenades decorated with a dizzying array of holo advertisements, screens with livefeeds from the HoloNet, as well as terminals and gleaming droids guests and passerby could access for information on the station's innumerable diversions and extravagances. The thoroughfares and multileveled walkways were swarming with beings of all species, most of whom were dressed in fine garments, jewelry, and affectations of their stature and placement within the upper echelons of galactic society. It was readily apparent that the Wheel catered to those who possessed enough assets and credits to rack up impressive gambling tabs, and thus create an atmosphere of excitement, anticipation, and suspense. Foyi noticed that many of those they passed gave them sidelong glances that were openly critical, and she realized the majority of those glares were resultant of her passage and appearance, for her clothes were both functional and comfortable, instead of flashy, fashionable, and excessive. Many of those who levered such despicable gazes upon her were wearing a cruiser's worth of credits on their person in the value of their garments alone. The Wheel represented the entertainment hotspot for the upper levels of society, for those who headed vast megacorporations, owned their own spacestations, moons, even planets, and for those who fell within the graces of the Empire. Despite this, she saw no overt Imperial presence, and neither did she see signs of Yuelo's men or the Anjiliac Kajidic displayed openly. Perhaps such organizations did not exist out here. Or they did have influence and presence here, but were not in control, and thus had to keep a low profile. Even so, so many eyes upon her made her more than a little nervous, and she quickened her step beside Rayf as he continued to lead her on, offering his arm for support when she began to pant from the soreness in her stiff legs.

Rayf led her to a corner in the main thoroughfare, turning down into a bustling side corridor that opened onto a wide, flat dock, a large rectangular room that was supported by several ornate pillars and filled with many small knots of traveling groups. Most of these groups consisted of the affluent and influential, accompanied by friends, family, and sycophants, surrounded by entourages of servants, majordomos, and guards. The room was open on the far side, the floor ending at the edge of a platform that gave way to a large, horizontal tube that disappeared into the distance on both the right and left of the platform. As Foyi watched, a great wind and the howling sound of immense suction shrieked through the tunnel, and several gleaming capsules of polished, silvery metal appeared at the edge of the platform. Doors on the exterior of these capsules opened up and out, disgorging dozens of passengers onto the platform, while those already waiting for the arrival of the vehicles began to file into the emptied vessels, intending to be carried through the windy tubes to parts unknown throughout the superstructure of the Wheel.

Rayf and Foyi stepped up to the edge of the platform, awaiting the next cadre of vessels to transport them. Foyi could feel the immense power of the shifting air pressures in the tube, the wind clawing at her clothing and even lifting the tips of her _lekku_ from her shoulders. She was still leaning on Rayf, and having difficulty breathing from the distance they had covered thus far, as well as the soreness that still permeated her body. "Airflow cars," Rayf explained, indicating the vessels that whipped through the tunnels before them. "Fastest way to get around this station outside of turbolifts and grav cars. We'll hitch a ride on one to the docks, where we'll get back to the _Flamusfracta_."

"And...be on our way," Foyi breathed.

Rayf nodded. There was a gust of wind that rippled their clothing, then another line of airflow cars emerged, fractures appearing in their gleaming external surfaces as the doors opened wide to let out the passengers ensconced within. Foyi had a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach as she looked into the interiors of those airflow cars, at the dim lighting and rows of plush seats, as she was reminded briefly of a sarcophagus. But when the two of them crawled into the vehicle with over a dozen other beings, she found it actually quite roomy, and the seats were the height of comfort. The airflow car's door slid closed with a slight hiss, and while there was no sudden lurch as the vessel sped on its way, she could feel the sensation of being hurtled down a shaft at incredible velocities. Foyi could not stop herself from dozing off slightly as the hum of the vehicle, the vibrations of the wind that carried it forward, and the relaxed structure of the seat all combined to form a soothing lullaby. She did not even realize that she had fallen asleep until she awoke with a start, Rayf nudging her shoulder. Bleary-eyed, she allowed him to help her out of the airflow car, and the pair stepped out onto another platform not unlike the one they had departed from.

Another blur of passages, corridors, and promenades glittering with scrolling holo ads, flashing lights, and slogans in stylized Aurebesh, filled with jostling crowds of the rich and famous. Her eyes were inexorably drawn to some of these advertisements, one showing scenic images of the Wheel from space, causing her to gawk at the picturesque curves of the space station's polished exterior, the grand yachts and cruisers that whirled through the stars carving graceful arcs about the Wheel's central axis. Beneath the holograms scrolled Aurebesh characters imparting a popular slogan for the Wheel, contrasting the temperatures of space and the "action" on the wheel, the images of the Wheel's hull fading to give panoramic views of the space station's most popular casinos, including a lounge filled with red upholstery and furniture, used by specimens of mostly human and near-human races who appeared to be thoroughly enjoying themselves and clutching enormous stacks of credits. Beside this advertisement was another screen in the midst of playing a rousing holodrama that none-too-subtly painted the characters displayed therein garbed in Imperial uniforms and insignia as heroes, all arranged around a young, human male who appeared to be the star of the film, and had a face that seemed to have been sculpted specifically for holo entertainment. Captions beneath the screen named the film as _The Black Bantha_ , and beneath these scrolled the names of the main actors who participated in the film in repetend, the most prominent of these names belonging to a Garik Loran. Foyi sneered as one of the Imperial characters was shown assisting the child lead in a most wise and benevolent manner, though she could not deny to herself a dark sense of fascination, for she had never seen an actual holodrama before. Rayf had to physically tear her away from the screen, and she felt a moment of shame as she considered how interesting Tama would find the film, thus prompting her to recall the goals she had set for herself in rescuing her sister.

They finally made it through the thick, shuffling crowds on the main promenades, squeezing through cramped corridors that were just as busy as those they had left, or even more so as they advanced against the press. She kept a grip on Rayf's arm as he shoved his way through the crowd, using small telepathic suggestions and tiny applications of the Force to cause the hordes of people heading the opposite direction to step aside with hardly a look sideways at the pair. Foyi was grateful for the efforts on her part, for she was certain if she were jostled too much by passerby, she would be surely knocked to her back by someone, her legs were still so unsteady. The corridors they passed through finally opened into a line of docking bays set into the massive, sweeping metal walls before them, the doorways that denoted entrances to the hangars curving inward to the left and right as far as the eyes could see. Rayf said nothing as he concentrated on reading the numbers stenciled in gilt strokes beside the doors, until he stopped before a portal designated Docking Bay 31. There were members of the Wheel Security Force stationed outside the door, a pair of human males, their pale faces tinted green by the nearly opaque blast shields on their enclosed helmets, their bulky but functional uniforms arrayed in green and gold colors. They held blaster rifles across their chests, and shock rods were shoved into sheathes at their equipment belts. Rayf gave them a smile so charming it was worthy of a Zeltron and provided his personal pass, as the bay was restricted to those who reserved its space. A cursory scan of the pass allowed the two of them to proceed through the ornate doors, the two guards giving Foyi gazes that were merely curious, not hostile, as she passed within their regard. The door slid shut with barely a whisper of sound behind them, and Foyi and Rayf walked into a sizable docking bay, its far opening a yawning black rectangle tinged with blue containment fields, a vacuous sea of silver lights revolving opposite of the Wheel's axial rotation. In the center of the bay sat the _Flamusfracta_ , the replica Firespray-31-class interceptor's rough and pitted hull looking out of place on the gleaming, polished floor and walls of the docking bay.

Foyi looked up at Rayf as they proceeded across the floor, and she almost felt sorry for treading with her worn, scuffed, and muddied boots across the polished surface. "This bay looks...expensive. How did you manage to secure such docking arrangements? More Epsis contacts?"

Rayf nodded. "That was some of it, though I doubt I'll be able to count on my contacts with Epsis for much longer, 'cause they know who was responsible for all the chaos and havoc we wrought in Point Nadir. The rest was accomplished through our supposed affiliations with the Tapani Noble House Barnaba, a winning personality on my part, and some handy greasing of the servomotors." Another grin quirked his lips. "And maybe a mind trick or two. Never was very good with those things, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it."

They entered the _Flamusfracta_ and made their way to the cockpit, strapping themselves into the crash restraints as Rayf keyed in the startup sequence. Foyi breathed a sigh of relief to be off her feet again, and let herself search the depths of the Force all around her, finding the serenity at the very center of her being and letting it grow to fill her. Her pain, her stiffness, and her fear for Tama were lost in that meditative, epitomized state, and she simply let herself exist in the moment and the present, to feel the oneness with the Force. She opened her eyes as Rayf opened the throttle on the engines and the ship inverted, rising off its aft end and righting itself as it soared through the hangar's opening. Rayf tipped it slightly on its port side as he slid through the containment fields, making certain he would not strike the edges of the docking bay, and then they were out into the void once more. Foyi cast a glance at the rear scopes and saw the Wheel shrinking in the distance, the scopes casting the space station in a digitized, crimson glow, a circular structure spinning slowly through a canvas of red. There were small, outlined figures whirling about the Wheel, silhouettes representing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ships leaving the Wheel's outer docking bays and buoys, or coasting into the space station's purview according to docking control's provided flight patterns. She shuddered as she left the miasma of greed, lust, and apathy that had permeated the very air of the station, then focused her eyes forward as the ship's navicomp finished plotting a course to Felucia. Rayf gave her a look that was more solemn than excited, then pushed the lever forward that would engage the hyperdrive. The silver points of light became lines, and the midnight blackness of space gave way to hypnotic blue swirls, leaving the Wheel far behind.

* * *

Foyi was still rabidly devouring a mostly palatable meal from the _Flamusfracta_ 's food synthesizers when Rayf sat down across from her, placing his datapad on the checkered surface of the dejarik table between them. He watched her eat with a skeptical glance, until she narrowed her gaze at him, and with a mouthful of podon-bandifert tart, exclaimed, "What're you looking at?"

"I'm just trying to determine whether you're refurbished or not," he replied absentmindedly as he chewed on a nutrient bar.

Foyi gave a derisive snort. "'Refurbished'? I was never broken, Rayf, just a little beat up. And no, I'm not a hundred percent yet, but I'm getting there. I figure I'll enter a healing trance during the trip, and maybe catch some more real sleep, and I should be ready to go and put my boot up the Shepherd's exhaust port." She looked down at the tray of food before her, embarrassed. "I don't believe I thanked you, Rayf. For...looking after me; for going to all that trouble to make sure I didn't start sucking void for good. Thanks. Truly."

Rayf gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "Ah, it was nothing. I'm just glad that you can walk again. Honestly, I was impressed that you made it that far before collapsing. But I could feel you living off the Force the entire time we confronted Yuelo. You were practically radiant, Foyi. It's been a long time since I've met someone as strong in the Force as you are."

Foyi gave an uncomfortable twitch of her _tchun_ , subconsciously wrapping it about her throat. "Well, I still succumbed, so I can't be _that_ strong."

"Seriously? That Mandallian took less punishment than you did and you dropped him. I'm looking at you, still breathing, still aware and alive, and not him. I'd say you did pretty good...plus, you're a lot lighter than a Mandallian Giant, so it wasn't too difficult to carry you to Yuelo's safehouse."

She smirked. "And once again, I thank you for that. Though I'm obviously still in the dark as to exactly what happened after _I_ went dark."

Rayf leaned back in his chair, thinking back on past events only he could remember. "Well, when you fainted, I was afraid you were dead or dying at first. I couldn't wake you, and I was determined to make sure you stayed alive. I mean, who would I bother with my annoying puns and irresistible optimism if you weren't around? The _Flamusfracta_ has heard all my jokes a dozen times already, so I know she wasn't eager to take your place. Anyway, I left Yuelo stuck under all that slag we dropped on his fat, wrinkly hide, and put the Force in my steps and got us down that tunnel as quickly as I could. Turns out, the tunnel sloped up into one of the warehouses in the Trade District, and it was truly a fortress, a perfect place for a Hutt and some of his goons to hole up and hold off anything short of a seismic charge. The safehouse was stocked with weapons, food, and medical supplies, as well as emergency stores of credits and valuables, so I helped myself to what we needed and decided to get you back to the _Flamusfracta_ so that we could leave Anjiliac territory before Yuelo got free and took up our differences with Zietta and the other Hutts. You can thank Yuelo's contingencies and paranoia for all the bacta patches and medkits you went through to keep you alive, which was long enough to get you to the state of the art med center on the Wheel. You had a nice long bacta bath and a little kath nap, and now here you are, seventy-eight percent Healthy Foyi again."

Foyi chuckled, only to feel a sharp stab through her ribs at the expression, eliciting a grimace. Rayf's expression fell, and he added solemnly, "Okay, maybe seventy-five."

Foyi practically inhaled the rest of her sweet tart, then replied around another mouthful, "You got another one of those, and I might make eighty before the hour's up."

Rayf's infectious grin returned, and he disappeared into the ship's cramped galley, returning a few moments later with three podon-bandifert tarts, two of which he offered the Twi'lek, who accepted them gratefully, tearing into them with abandon. She had not been hungry upon awakening from her slumber, but when they had finally embarked on their way to Felucia and Rayf had set food before her, she realized she was ravenous. Despite the pains and aches through her abdomen, the sustenance went down quickly to her grateful stomach. Rayf began to chew on his own sweet tart, then scooped up the datapad he had set down, flipping through several files he had compiled. "If you're not too busy stuffing your patogga hole, I spent most of the time you were borderline comatose researching everything I could find out about Felucia, and the Shepherd."

Foyi's gaze shot up to meet his own, and he began skimming the information he had displayed on the screen. "Felucia's a terrestrial jungle world in the Outer Rim. Hot, humid, lots of fungus, mushrooms, and large predators. Has been subject to small colonization efforts by Gossams, and was even controlled by the Commerce Guild during the Clone Wars. Several battles and skirmishes were fought there during the same time period 'cause Felucia sits near the intersection of two major hyperlanes, with the Republic ultimately successful, but only after great cost and a couple years of fighting. Nowadays, many of the Gossam cities and settlements that once existed there have been abandoned or destroyed, and what little of the planet is settled has been done so by the natives, which are not particularly friendly to outsiders." He tapped a few more icons on the screen. "Reports of battles and wartime from the Clone Wars have always been sketchy, even before Palpatine began changing the past however he so chose to best support the solidarity of the New Order. But what I was able to gather through research and sliced records, Felucia suffered heavy damage during the war, including the decimation of most forms of modern civilization on the planet. Large parts of the planet's ecosystem were poisoned by contingency toxins released by the Commerce Guild before they were shattered. I sliced a few Imperial records as well, and I bet you would never guess that the Empire has claimed the world as their own now, though from what I can determine, it's not a true occupation force, but more of a garrison and research team of some sort."

Foyi raised a quizzical brow. "What are they researching?"

"Biotoxins and botanicals, mostly. Felucia produces a lot of strange and unique flora and fauna, and many types of compounds and solutions can be harvested from them for a variety of medicinal purposes. Though, knowing the Empire, they're probably more interested in bioweapons and targeted neurotoxins." He placed the datapad on the dejarik table, displaying an elevation map that seemed to have been compiled from satellite imagery, showing a jagged and tumultuous landscape mostly covered in jungle, forest, and ridged stone, the dense landscape broken by lakes, rivers, and creeks, scarred by the burned patches and slashed clearings where warfare had violated the sanctity of the fungal realm. There was a hazy, pixellated collection of shapes in the center of the images, all grays and blacks, which may have represented a complex of buildings or structures. There was a map marker on those gray shapes, a string of numbers floating beside it denoting the pin on the images as the exact location specified by the coordinates Yuelo had given them under duress. "It took me awhile to even get this glimpse, but fortunately, what little is recorded of the planet's surface encompasses the immediate area around the coordinates Yuelo's goons meet the Shepherd for deliveries. I _think_ it's some old Separatist base or lookout point, though it could be a clone tapcafe for all I know."

Foyi stared down at the datapad, as though she could see Tama in the static images simply by willing it to be so. "So, there are Imperials down there somewhere, and if you were able to dredge up these old maps, it's likely the Empire already has them too. Not to mention Yuelo might be warning the Shepherd as we speak that we're coming."

"Don't forget that the Shepherd might not actually be on Felucia," Rayf pointed out glumly. "This could simply be a dead drop, with little to no clues as to the Shepherd's real location."

Foyi glared down at the datapad, acknowledging the issues he had brought to her attention and hoping that their first solid lead on the Shepherd, and by extension, Tama's, whereabouts would not turn out to be another wild yunax chase. "Any other problems that we could be facing on Felucia?"

Rayf scratched the hair on his chin uncomfortably. "Yeah. Felucia's full of both plants and animals that aren't too fond of visitors, not to mention the natives, of which there are two species. The one is mostly peaceful, keeping to themselves in small villages and farming nysillin, but the Jungle Felucians are a different breed of bantha. They keep to themselves, hiding out in the wilderness in small villages and tribes, and viciously attack and kill anyone they deem a threat to their existence and ways of life. Which is pretty much anyone who isn't part of their tribes. I even found some obscure references in some of the Imperial reports that claim some of these Felucians possess 'magical abilities', which they use to truly deadly effect for stealth, ambushes, and even taming the more disagreeable fauna. Like rancors."

Foyi's green skin took on a sickly pallor. "They're Force-sensitives? With _rancors_ for pets?"

"According to some old Republic military reports from the Clone Wars, there're also acklay running about the wilderness, though no mention of Felucians training them as being's best friend. Though, if you can tame a rancor, I wouldn't put it past them." He leaned over the datapad, drawing her attention to the dark and serious gaze he levered her way. "This isn't going to be a blue milk run, Foyi. If these Force-users are as accomplished as these reports suggest, not only are they going to be dangerous to us, but they've likely attracted Imperial contingencies that I don't know we're prepared for."

"Like the Jedi hunters," Foyi barely dared to breathe.

Rayf nodded, looking rather ill. "The Inquisitorius. Purge Troops. Maybe even a Terror Unit." He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, then gave a lengthy sigh of resignation. "But we've no choice. The way I see it, if Tama is imprisoned on Felucia, all the threats we've just discussed are just more reasons for why we must liberate her. Never mind whatever the Shepherd would want her for; if the Empire is in the same place, hunting Force-users, it will only be a matter of time before they discover her."

Foyi nodded; she could feel a cold current of fear whirling about her heart, threatening to drown it completely. "Her training in the ways of the Zeison Sha and the Force overall is incomplete. She knows how to hide herself in the Force, but not as well as she could. Not as well as I can. And she might be even more battered and wounded than I am." She met Rayf's eyes again, her own widening with barely-controlled fear for her sister. "And I hadn't even gotten around to teaching her how to fight other Force-users. If she's in a jungle full of hostile ones, with the Emperor's Force hounds prowling around..." She looked around the room about her, listening to the sound of the hyperdrive, the thrumming of the engines. "Dose this ship go any faster?"

Rayf shook his head ruefully, then reached across the table and placed a palm over her own hand. His presence in the Force expanded, creating ripples in the waves of the Force between them, and she could feel the calm, collected influence beginning to seep into her own. "Trust in the Force, remember? There's nothing we can do right now, but plan, prepare, and trust that the Force will provide for Tama, trust that she's smart, capable, alive, and doing everything she can to make sure she stays that way. When we get there, if she's there, we'll find her, even if we have to wade through the entire Empire, Felucian jungle, and whatever else the galaxy throws at us to get to her. Nothing's changed; things have just gotten more complicated."

Foyi met his kind and serene stare, and accepted the offered sensations of calm and peace with gratitude. She mentally reached toward the core of her being and gripped it tight, holding onto it, allowing the serenity she kept there to spread out and eradicate the fear worming through her heart. She pulled her hand back with a grateful smile, then let out a great exhalation as she centered herself. She tapped the edge of the datapad with her finger, and replied with renewed confidence. "You're right, of course. We'll do this. Tama's counting on us." Her gaze flicked down to the datapad. "Did you find out anything about the Shepherd?"

Rayf grimaced, folding his arms across his chest and slowly shaking his head. "Not as much as I would've liked. Alotta rumors and yarns coming from fogblasted and glit-biting spacers, but nothing I would count as hard, verifiable fact. Most of it was the same kind of stuff you've heard before. The Shepherd is not well-known across the galaxy, but there are plenty of tales regarding pretty much every detail of this person, droid, or thing calling itself 'the Shepherd' out here on the Outer Rim. I even found a few bounties and death warrants on the Shepherd's head, just like Yuelo said, but since no one really knows anything about him, no respectable bounty hunter has ever seriously considered taking up the contract. Plus, none of his supposed crimes have actually been tied directly to him, so the bounty isn't high enough for most bounty hunters to even consider. He's more like the Lord Nyax of the Outer Rim, supposedly haunting the steps of misbehaving and sinful children and coming for them in the night, when they least suspect it, to carry them away back to his lair, never to be seen again. I found some 'wanted' ads and 'missing' holos for kids that disappeared without a trace, some of their parents attributing their disappearances to 'kidnapping by the Shepherd'."

Foyi furrowed her brow. "'Lord Nyax'?"

Rayf stared at her a moment, as if he could not believe she was unaware of the reference, then gave a slight chuckle as he remembered that she had been insulated from much of the galaxy until quite recently. "Ah, Lord Nyax is an old Corellian legend. Supposedly, he's an evil, pale ghost with yellow eyes, a black hooded cloak, long nails, and sharp teeth, who comes at night to steal away misbehaving children from their beds while they slept. A stupid threat Corellian parents would tell their children to get their compliance when being particularly willful. Due to my unique upbringing, I never knew my parents long enough to rebel against them, nor have the holy milking Sith scared out of me by the specter of Lord Nyax, but I've heard about it from other Corellians I've met who used to be deathly afraid of being kidnapped by the ghost when they were children." His expression darkened. "You know, come to think of it, the Shepherd's methods sound awfully similar to those actions taken by the fictional Lord Nyax. Perhaps he's affiliated with the Cult of Lord Nyax on Corellia; might be a connection there we could check out if we find nothing on Felucia." He slid the datapad within reach, then recorded some notes on the device to chronicle his sudden insight.

Foyi unconsciously stroked her _tchun_ in thought, the images of Felucia's topography still running through her mind, interspersed with a half dozen imagined scenarios of facing the many dangers apparent on the world. Rancors, robed Inquisitors, and faceless Felucian Force adepts made a rogues' gallery of horrors through her mind, and she had to call upon the Force to calm herself again. She felt a yawn come to her lips unbidden, and stood wearily from her seat, the excessive amount of food she had consumed sitting heavily in her stomach. Rayf looked up from his datapad and favored her with a soft smile. "You look exhausted. Honestly, sweetheart, I don't know how you're still awake, much less standing."

"Well, apparently I've been asleep for four days."

"And you look like you could use four more. We're still a long way from Felucia; you should probably take the opportunity to get as much rest as possible. Something tells me that once we get to where we're going, we won't be getting much sleep."

Foyi gave him a skeptical glance. "Does the Force tell you this?"

"Nah, just the trusty Moors' intuition. Everytime I look at these images or any information about Felucia, I get a bad feeling. Whatever's waiting for us there ain't gonna be simple."

Foyi felt like arguing, but what he said made sense. Despite having been completely oblivious to the galaxy for almost a week, she still felt as though she had barely gotten any sleep, and the weight in her stomach seemed determined to drag her down further, prompting her to lose herself in the unconscious bliss that truly deep sleep offered. She knew she should instead allow herself to fall beneath the surface waves of the Force and to drawn upon the healing offered in its depths, but she doubted she could manage the concentration and truly meditative state that required. Her body and mind practically screamed for sleep, and she doubted they would cease their insistence no matter how deeply she delved within the Force; being Force-sensitive did not divorce her from the needs of her mundane existence completely, and she had ignored most of those needs for too long already. After all, trying to rescue Tama with a mere modicum of her capabilities and strength would more than likely get herself, Rayf, and Tama killed. Ultimately, she merely nodded sleepily. "Perhaps you're right. I'll just head to my bunk. Make sure I'm up at least four hours before we reach Felucia."

Rayf pushed off the surface of the dejarik board and stretched, his arms reaching for the perimeters of the room. Foyi belatedly realized that he must be incredibly tired as well, as she doubted he had had little sleep in the intervening time since they had left Point Nadir. She grimaced, silently berating herself for being so focused on herself and her own goals, at the expense of the man who had pledged his friendship and capabilities to accomplishing those goals, to helping her rescue someone he had never met before. "Maybe you should get some sleep as well."

He shook his head ruefully. "I...should probably just do some more research. Maybe practice a little, keep my body in shape and my wan-shen sharp, you know."

"Rayf. Neither one of us is going to help anyone if we're falling asleep on our feet in the middle of the Felucian jungle. Get some sleep."

"The Force shall sustain me," he replied stubbornly.

Foyi's _lekku_ writhed in irritation. She could be stubborn as well, and probably to a greater extent than Rayf could. She jabbed a commanding finger in his direction. "Rayf...you don't go to sleep, I won't either. Set an alarm or whatever if you have to, but we're both getting some sleep, or none at all. Your choice."

Rayf considered her demands carefully, then a rakish grin came to his features. "So we're in this together, huh? That an invitation?"

Foyi made a disgusted snort as she passed him on her way to the cabins. "You wish, laserbrain. Get some sleep, and leave remarks like that in your head; maybe then you'd be able to fill it with something."

Rayf merely gave a chuckle as she passed him, calling after her, "'Night, 'cousin'."

"'Night", she murmured, slipping through the door into the claustrophobic cabin that had been designated as hers. The bunk on the far wall, despite its sparse structure and appearance, was one of the most beautiful objects she had ever seen. She gave a sigh of relief as she clambered atop it, not even bothering to undress or pull the thin sheets over herself. She was not even aware of her head hitting the pillow as unconscious slumber took her and plunged her into the deepest depths of serenity.

* * *

Foyi awoke to the sound of her door opening and closing rapidly, its servos whining as slid back and forth. She blinked the blur and mucus brought on by sleep from her eyes, to see Rayf standing in the doorway, his visage appearing and reappearing as the door slid back and forth. He had a wide and sardonic grin plastered on his face, and much of the exhaustion she had seen etched into his face and drooping from his eyes had disappeared. In fact, he seemed practically giddy with renewed energy as he crowed, "Up and upright, cousin!"

Foyi cursed under her breath as Rayf continued to open and close the door in an irritating fashion, his wide grin even more aggravating than the sound of the door's sliding servomotors. She tried to rise from her bunk and felt almost every ache and pain shoot through her body at once, the final phantasms of her wounds demanding attention. She gave a groan of pain and consternation; all her body wanted to do was continue sleeping, though her mind, which had already risen from the foggy morass of sleep, urged her physical form to get moving. She practically crawled out of bed, then shoved off the floor to stand again, smoothing and straightening her rumpled clothes in an attempt to salvage some of her dignity. She ran a hand over her eyes, peering from between fingers at the blinding light silhouetting Rayf's frame. "Am I dead yet?" she groaned irritably.

Rayf's white teeth flashed as he finally kept the door open, stepping aside as she stumbled through the doorway past his upraised arm. "You don't get to die on my watch."

She shook her head in exasperation and made her way back to the lounge, where she flopped on the crash couch beside the dejarik board. "You're rather lame, you know that?" She smeared a hand over her eyes again. "Is there any caf?"

As if on cue, Rayf plopped a tray of piping hot caf on the table, surrounded by empty cups and condiments like sugar and cream to add to the dark and heavenly liquid. Foyi set about making herself a cup of caf loaded with sugar and a copious amount of cream, then breathed a sigh of relief as the warm liquid slid down her esophagus and settled in her stomach, the energy it could provide spreading to the ends of her limbs in short order and allowing her mind to focus. She opened her eyes to see Rayf coming back into the room, carrying a large bundle of plating, cloth, and the metallic length of an energy weapon. He placed them on the couch beside her, and she saw that it was the armor indicative of the Zeison Sha, created by her own hands, as well as the disruptor rifle she had taken as hers. She ran her hands over the pitted and scarred surface of the armored plating, the tears and slashes through the heavy cloth that strung it all together. She grimaced; the armor had suffered considerable damage since she had set off from Yanibar, and she doubted its effectiveness until she managed to repair it. Or even make a new set. The disruptor rifle was in far better shape, and a quick glance at the readout on its chamber revealed that its power cells had been replenished, and was at full charge. She looked up to thank him, but then he placed the unbuckled harness she usually kept across her back, its center holding her prized and cherished discblade. Lovingly, she extracted the weapon from its harness, turning it over in her hands, inspecting its contours and blades as much with the Force as she did her eyes. It was exactly how she remembered it, minus the blood she had last coated its exterior with, and appeared none the worse for wear. She slid the weapon back into its sheathe, then sighed contentedly. "Thank you, Rayf."

He sat down across the table from her and began preparing his own cup of caf. "I figured you would be wanting that stuff, though I'm not so sure that armor's going to help you much anymore until it's repaired...or replaced."

Foyi bit her lower lip as she laid the armor out before her, looking at the deep dents, rents, tears, and carbon scoring. She gathered the pieces together in a tightly-wrapped bundle and set it aside reluctantly. She looked down at her clothes, noting to herself that the sturdy material would do little against a blaster bolt, though her armor was more effective against glancing blows over direct hits anyway. She would simply have to rely on her abilities to evade and deflect incoming attacks more than usual. "You're right. Wearing armor that's liable to drop pieces everywhere we go in the jungle isn't going to be of much use. I don't suppose you have any duranium and phrik alloys on hand you're not using, do you?"

Rayf inspected the pockets of his jacket, then shrugged apologetically. "All out, I'm afraid. Though I did take plenty of useful items from Yuelo's safehouse, including a whole armory's worth of weapons and explosives I'm sure we can put to good use."

"What about the warehouse we 'acquired' from our good friend Sho Sura?"

Rayf patted his datapad at his belt after a lengthy slurp of caf. "Still under our new security measures, and I haven't received any alerts that someone has tried to get in. Force willing, it'll still be waiting for us whenever we next visit Point Nadir again...which should be a long time in the future, if it's all the same to you, considering how many people we pissed off the last time we were there."

"What in the galaxy are we going to do with that warehouse?" Foyi asked, honestly bewildered. "I mean, there's plenty of legitimate salvage and merchandise held within that warehouse, but there are all the spice too..."

"Yeah! We could be rich! We could fill my ship's cargo hold with credits, and roll around in it, laughing at the galaxy's misfortune?"

Foyi answered his mischievous expression with one of contempt. "You want us to be spicerunners now? Selling drugs to all the vulnerable, addicted, and disadvantaged in the galaxy?"

His expression fell. "Not really. If money really mattered to either one of us, that would be the smart move, though I think our track record together so far shows we rarely take the 'smart move' in any given situation."

Foyi laughed, the action causing pain to knife through her ribs again. "I suppose I can't disagree. This is probably a decision to make that can wait till after we rescue Tama."

"I agree wholeheartedly," came his enthusiastic response. He drained the rest of his caf, checked his chrono, and sprang to his feet. "Well, if the navicomp's calculations are correct, we should arrive on Felucia in a few hours. I'm going to take the time to practice and meditate. My wan-shen has been feeling lonely and betrayed by all my reliance on blasters lately; time to put it through a few maneuvers, make sure the old bones and muscles are still up to snuff. If you need me, I'll be in the cargo hold." And without further ado, he walked through the door and to the hold in the back, leaving Foyi alone with her thoughts and the rest of the caf. It took her moments to consume the majority of the remaining caf, then, despite the caf's stimulants coursing through her body, she found it relatively easy to contact the center of peace and calm in herself, and to descend within healing waters of a meditative Force trance. She lost track of time and the outside world, focusing on becoming one with the Force, on letting its cool waters caress her skin and slide through her body, finding the disruptions and imbalances within her body and spirit left by both her physical and emotional ordeals. Despite the amount of rejuvenating sleep she had received recently, none of it compared to the relaxation and regeneration of a healing Force trance, where she completely lost herself within the endless power of the Force and attained true balance with the unifying energy of all existence.

She only reluctantly drug herself from the depths of her meditation when she heard the chime sounding through the ship, the soft alarm that signaled the end of their journey. She straightened her limbs from where she had been sitting on the crash couch, finding they were barely sore anymore, and the pain that had been intermittently plaguing her body since awakening in the Wheel's medcenter. She got up to her feet in time to see Rayf jog through the room on his way to the cockpit; his skin was slightly flushed, but she could see no true sweat on his body, even though he had likely spent the last few hours in the frenetic meditative stances indicative of the Matukai. Foyi followed him at a slower speed, still unsteady on her feet, and clambered into the copilot's chair just as Rayf disengaged the hyperdrive. The tunnel of blue and white flashing past the viewports stretched into streaks of bluish-white light, then starlines, then finally coalesced into the ocean of stars against the void of space. Dominating the bottom of her view and seeming to pop into existence was a vast semicircle of a planet that grew larger as the ship veered toward it. The planet's atmosphere was shrouded by gray stretches of moisture, storm systems and nomadic tribes of clouds twisting and swirling over the world's surface. They allowed brief glimpses of the surface beneath their leering gazes, revealing vast, stormy oceans bisected by jagged continents in shades of green, purple, and brown. As the world grew to swallow the viewports, Rayf reached back and began buckling his crash restraints, while Foyi mimicked him, her gaze never leaving the sight of the planet looming before them. It looked perfectly tranquil, a world where nature ruled, had fought the conquering forces of civilization, had weathered the violations of war, and now stood strong and defiant. She felt a small current of concern from Rayf, and looked to the side to see a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his neck, his brow furrowed in concentration, as though he was focusing on not being sick. He felt her gaze, but did not meet it as they descended toward the upper atmosphere. "You _feel_ that? The planet?"

Foyi did not answer, instead submerging herself in the Force again, then sending out searching waves to Felucia below them. She did not have to extend her senses far, however, for the full brunt of the planet's Force energies crashed over her like a tsunami, threatening to engulf her. The planet was filled to bursting with life, their presences and essences forming a network of life, thought, and instinct so intertwined, tangled, and numerous it was nearly impossible for her to pick out individuals in the morass of light and waves. It was as if the entire planet was one major organism, the creatures and plants across its surface forming the organs and anatomical systems of the whole, connected to each other in infinite numbers of ways so that she could not even begin to disaggregate a single creature from the whole. But the prevalence of the Living Force on this planet was not what nearly floored her, but rather the overall imbalance in the Force that had seeped into the very crust of Felucia, the cold waters that produced the undertow of that tsunami of life and chilled her to her very core. It was a feeling she had become intimately familiar with over the last week or so, but never in such an overwhelming and noxious amount. The Dark Side shadowed this planet, having seeped into everything living on the world, tainting their essences to their very cores. Everything below them felt ill, twisted, and warped, the Dark Side having spread like an epidemic through the fabric of the world's very existence. She pulled her consciousness back from the brink hastily, lest she fall into those fathomless depths and be lost to the void. She became aware again of the comforting confines of the cockpit, of the looming, clouded atmosphere of Felucia filling the entire viewports, which suddenly seemed sinister, whereas before it had appeared tranquil, natural, and captivating.

"There's something wrong with this planet..." Rayf remarked, more to himself than her. He appeared to be in pain, and it was only with great exertion on his part that he regained his calm composure.

"The Force...is unusually strong here," Foyi added, keeping her consciousness closely bound to her own mind. "But I mostly feel the Dark Side in the organisms here. No wonder the Empire would be interested in this place."

"We must be vigilant. Trust nothing, and be careful in how you use the Force while we're here."

No more words were exchanged between them as Rayf focused on getting the _Flamusfracta_ through the atmosphere in one piece, enduring the jarring turbulence as the awkwardly-shaped vessel knifed through the exosphere and crossed into lower layers within moments, obscuring the viewports in flashes of fire that chewed at the ship's deflectors. Foyi gripped the rests of her chair in anxiety as the ship bucked and swooped side to side, Rayf wrestling with the control yoke but keeping it flying upright and in a relatively straight line. Soon, the flames disappeared to be replaced by grit and splattering moisture as they slashed through cloud layers, emerging to see the jungle below. The dusky sun was setting on the horizon, casting a glare over indeterminate square kilometers of jungle, thick and tangled with species of fungus that twisted upward in great bulbous stacks, mushrooms the size of star cruisers blanketing whole regions' worth of terrain with their effulgent shades, interdependent and endless colonies of moss and mold forming a springy carpet across the forest floor. In the dimming light, most of the flora was aglow with phosphorescent patterns and inner lights, producing a sea of fungal matter that seemed to undulate and glitter as they passed over it. Even moving as quickly as they were, Foyi could see the air itself seemed to have a thick, grainy filter upon it, causing all light to distort and dim as clouds of spores swirled through the air, choking off the very atmosphere. It was going to be difficult to breathe with the Dark Side so prevalent, but these spores would further compound the issue.

Rayf tipped the _Flamusfracta_ to starboard, and Foyi saw the first sign of intelligent, geometric architecture rising from the jungle's depths. Upon approach, it was revealed to be a rectangular landing platform, its hard edges and lines softened and broken by the species of fungus growing up its supports and across its surface, while Felucia's vicious erosive elements had discolored the gray metal to a rusty pallor. The platform rose above a small cluster of dilapidated buildings, a close compound Felucia was hellbent on dismantling, judging by the amount of fungal growth that traversed the edifices' walls and roofs. Rayf tipped the ship on its aft as they approached, and Foyi had a brief moment of vertigo as they descended vertically, followed by a grinding noise that shivered through the ship as the landing sequence engaged and made contact with the landing platform's top. Rayf began flipping switches to shut down the engines and essential systems, and Foyi breathed a sigh of relief at surviving another landing. She was not entirely comfortable with interstellar travel yet.

Rayf unstrapped the crash restraints and exhaled, as if preparing himself for whatever might lay ahead. "End of the road, cousin."

Foyi nodded and levered herself out of the chair, making her way to the boarding ramp, picking up her disruptor rifle and strapping on her discblade's harness along the way. As soon as she opened the ramp, she was assaulted by the planet's humidity, like a physical force that had slapped her across the face. She gasped, and succeeded in inhaling a lungful of spores and heavy, rank moisture, which immediately set her sneezing and coughing. She steadied herself and strode down the ramp, trying not to breathe too deeply of the turgid atmosphere, and walked onto the landing platform, stepping over particularly hoary patches of fungus that had worked their way into the minute fractures between the disparate plates making up the platform's deck. Due to the height of the platform above the planet's surface, there was a stiff wind blowing across the surface, stirring her clothes and bringing with it a suffocating heat and more clouds of spores that worked their way into her nostrils and eyes. The forest stretched out before her, kilometers upon kilometers of fungus, much of it exuding its own types of light, coursing over undulating hills and craggy, jagged ridges before plunging into deep valleys and gorges. The feelings of life and disease in the Force was even stronger here, the Dark Side reaching out with frigid fingers in myriad grasping claws, all reaching for her heart, as if intending to infect her along with everything else on this planet.

Rayf came to her side, his step soft and nearly soundless, despite the amount of equipment he carried. His wan-shen had been partitioned and clasped to his belt again, while two energy weapons were strapped to his back, the VES-700 Pulse Rifle he had acquired from one of Yuelo's thugs, and a DLT-20A Longblaster he had presumably relieved from Yuelo's stockpiles in his safehouse. At his hip was holstered a WESTAR-34 Blaster Pistol, and slung over his shoulder was a pack that presumably carried explosives. As he approached, he offered Foyi an A295 Blaster Rifle, which she accepted gratefully and slung it across her back beside the Disruptor Rifle. Together, the two of them stared off into the jungle ahead, looking for further signs of civilization or habitation. Rayf gave a strangled cough, then turned to look down at her. "Have any senses of Tama yet?"

Foyi shook her head slowly. "Not so far. It's so hard to concentrate...the Force is so wild and...convoluted here, so dark and diseased. I can barely concentrate, much less pick out a particular person amongst all these other life signatures. If she's here, I doubt I'll sense her until we get closer to her, or we stumble upon a place she's been recently."

Rayf sighed. "Then we should probably focus on hunting for signs of the Shepherd. Yuelo said this was the dead drop for all the slaves that are shuttled through here, so even if the Shepherd comes later to take them offworld, there has to be some sign of it."

Foyi peered over the edge of the platform, gazing down into the Separatist ruins of the compound almost a dozen meters below them. "We could start down there."

"That's what I was gonna say. Great minds think alike."

Foyi smirked as she walked to the corner of the platform, where a series of rusting, rickety stairs clambered down the supports to the jungle below. "Flattery doesn't become you, Rayf."

"Hey, someone has to stroke my ego, and you're sure as hell not going to."

"Damn straight."


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

The shuttle christened the _Rimfire_ by its sentimental captain and command crew, but officially designated _Lambda-1138_ , curved through the upper atmosphere of Felucia, spores and splashes of moisture slashing across the viewports as it descended. The once grand edifices and soaring skyscrapers of Kway Teow thrust into the sky below the shuttle, rising up to embrace it as it dropped through the air to the landing platform awaiting them on the edge of the city below. Moss, mold, and all manner of alien fungi crawled their way up the sides of the crumbling edifices, inevitably losing their futile war against the ravages of time and erosion. Years ago, before the Clone Wars, the city had been the capital of this wild and untamed world, the crowning achievement of decades upon decades of attempts to carve a modern civilization from the deepest wilds of the jungle, despite the protests of the violent and hostile natives, the stubborn refusal of the virulent flora to give way. It had even served as the headquarters for the Commerce Guild during that time period, where Shu Mai herself, the Presidente of the same organization, had kept a secure compound. But like so many cities on so many worlds, the Clone Wars had not been kind to Kway Teow, and what was left was little more than a settlement scrabbling for purchase and survival in the ruins decimated by war. At least, until the Empire had arrived on the world, taking it for their own after the reformation of the Old Republic into the New Order. In the relative peace and security the Empire was currently experiencing, there was little more than a few scattered bases, outposts, and even a top-secret prison denoting the Empire's presence on the planet, save for Kway Teow, the base of the Imperial garrison stationed here. In the waning years of the Clone Wars and the nearly two decades of intervening time Palpatine's New Order had had to consolidate its power and influence, the Imperial presence had little more to do than oversee the control and interrogation of prisoners, as well as capture and enslave Gossam holdouts who continued to provide resistance to lawful rule and order in the galaxy. And despite the occasional skirmish with Felucian natives and the monstrous fauna that hunted the deeper, darker portions of the jungles, the Imperial troops stationed here had little to do other than become accustomed to the monotonous schedule of processing prisoners and slaves, overseeing daily affairs on a backwater world that possessed little technology beyond ten-year-old refreshers.

To most observers, the planet would have held little interest beyond the unique flora that covered much of its surface, millions of square kilometers of jungle that they might find fascinating or terrifying, depending on the particular observer's level of cynicism. But an atypical observer, one who could sense the Force, would have found the planet far more interesting, for Felucia's ecosystem was unique in the fact that the flora and fauna that had evolved here had done so with such interconnectivity and near-symbiosis that the world appeared to have a Force presence of its own. The Living Force was strong and powerful here, produced by the millions upon millions of living creatures that called this world home, and in turn were sustained by it. The planet seemed to exude mental and spiritual energy from its very soil, reaching out to bolster and draw upon the energies of all that walked its surface, or approached its atmosphere. At one time, the more esoteric and secretive divisions of the Empire's upper echelons had identified this world as having an unusual presence in the Force, and had deigned to study it and the delicate, metaphysical balance maintained by its own ecosystem.

However, that balance had been thrown into complete chaos, disrupted entirely by several localized events that had nevertheless caused unpredictable and catastrophic fallout across the entire physical and psychic landscape of the planet. There had been rumors of Jedi holdouts and fugitives aiding the Jungle Felucians in their assaults on Imperial outposts and personnel, then unconfirmed reports of an unknown individual who was purported to possess "magical" abilities far beyond what had even been recorded from the displays of most Jedi of the bygone age, apparently someone who had had an issue with the Jedi rebels. What could be gleaned from the scattered reports and examinations of those who had been sent to investigate the scene suggested the indiscriminate slaughter of over a legion of Imperial strormtroopers, along with dozens of natives, and potentially at least one Jedi, though what happened to the Jedi's allies or the person who had been so intent on destroying them was still unknown. The Empire had sent reinforcements and quickly regained a foothold on the world, but continuing reports had revealed a marked change in the world overall since these events. A sickness had settled into the fungi, the glowing lights becoming dimmer and shifting more toward gray in their pallor. The already-aggressive fauna had become ferocious and primal, to the point that Imperial patrols had lessened in recent months due to the high likelihood they would encounter small packs of jungle savages, often accompanied by large predators, such as rancors, whom they had somehow managed to train as their mounts and beasts of assault. And the reports of these natives often displaying powers and abilities beyond the realm of the norm continued to flood in, reports that had moved up the ranks of the Imperial hierarchy until they attracted the type of attention that had drawn the _Rimfire_ 's passengers here.

The _Lambda_ -class T-4a Shuttle circled the moldering landing platform on the city's outskirts before the pilot engaged the landing sequence, and the shuttle descended vertically, its outer wings folding up in a graceful arc to meet the height of the dorsal fin. A slight shock shivered through the vessel's frame as it made contact with the platform, and the boarding ramp at the front of the ship extended and lowered, admitting a hot, fetid wind laced with thick spores. Those seated in the passenger hold of the shuttle unbuckled themselves from their crash restraints, then began filing out of the shuttle and onto the platform, led by a Devaronian woman in maroon robes of zeyd-cloth over pieces of armor made from ultrachrome. The contingent of Imperial personnel that followed her comprised a squad of Inquisitorium Dark Troopers, hulking, heavily-armored products of the Dark Trooper Program, armed with heavy repeating blasters, blaster pistols, and shock staffs. Behind these came an even more menacing squad of humanoids clad in gray armor, their faces shrouded by threatening masks that evoked to those who remembered the fearsome visage of the Droid General Grievous. Their gauntlets and boots were decorated with durasteel blades, and wrist-mounted blasters graced their vambraces. Unlike the dark troopers, who walked with deliberate, heavy steps that sent thunderous vibrations through the boarding ramp, the stormtroopers who followed them moved with quick, loping gaits, as if they were beasts on the prowl, primal predators that had just picked up the scent of a fresh kill. Their breaths came in ragged, rasping gasps that shivered through the respirators built into their masks, and they had an unsettling habit of flexing their fingers, scraping the blades adorning the digits with a shrieking sound and flash of metal.

Despite the strange and highly-specialized squads of stormtroopers exiting the shuttle, it was obvious that they all answered, and paid deference, to the Devaronian woman who walked at the head of their procession. She was tall and thin, almost gangly, her stride elegant and purposeful, having a dangerous lean to it, as though she were perpetually in a battle stance, ready to attack or defend herself. The robes and armor she wore sheathed most of her body, her feet and hands clothed in high boots and dark gloves, so that only the skin of her throat and face were visible, which was covered in thick, downy fur in ranging shades of silver and white. Her snowy white hair was shoulder length, bound into a knot at the back of her head, swept back from her tall, pointed ears and narrow, severe face. Her light eyes shown like twin suns with the intensity of her stare from beneath a brow that contained the barest hints of a pair of circles where horns might have grown from her forehead, had she been a male of her species. Despite her composure, she could not suppress a slight cough at the consistency of spores in the air and the slimy moisture she felt from humidity slithering into her nostrils and violating the sensitive tissues of her esophagus. As she walked, the heavy layers of her robes swayed, revealing the equipment belt strapped around her waist consisting of a few light pouches and a cylinder of silvery duranium wrapped in circular rings about a handle of darker metals. The cylinder was over a decimeter in length, a small loop at the open end keeping it clipped to her belt, while its length necessitated that it bounced slightly with the movements of her thighs.

The Devaronian woman in maroon robes approached the Imperial lieutenant and squad of stormtroopers that had arranged themselves at parade rest to greet the visitors. The lieutenant was a thin, gaunt man with dark hair, the ends of which were slick with sweat; despite having been posted on Felucia for several months already, he did not appear acclimated to the climate. She could see the discomfort rolling off of him, crimson waves that boiled off his skin. His eyes, which were supposed to be rooted to a spot several centimeters above her head, flicked down to the cylinder at her belt, having been placed just to the front of her thigh so that it was displayed openly, but not brazenly. The crimson vibrations turned black with fear as he recognized the weapon for what it was, and tried very hard not to let that fear show on his face, even though his eyes widened and his pupils dilated slightly when they roamed to the squads of specialized stormtroopers following behind her. He snapped smartly to attention, even though she could smell the stench of human sweat that was tracing lines down his spine. "Inquisitor," he greeted her in the accent most Imperial officials and military personnel seemed to be adopting these days. "Welcome to Felucia. I must apologize for the somewhat...scarce reception, but had I been given more warning as to your arrival, I would have been able to better prepare..."

The Inquisitor gave him a cold look, and the small smile that opened her lips wide enough to bare her sharp incisors had even less warmth. "I'm certain you would have, Lieutenant. Though I require no such greetings nor acknowledgment. I am here on a mission of my own, and will expect full cooperation from you and your men on any and all aspects of my time here." She leaned closer, and the dark waves wreathing his form grew wider in length. "But only if I ask for it. Is that clear, Lieutenant?"

The man swallowed. "Of course, Inquisitor...? Forgive me, I do not know how to address you, ma'am."

"Inquisitor is fine," the Inquisitor replied, taking a deep sniff of the air. His fear was practically intoxicating, and she was going to enjoy every microsecond of this small, guilty pleasure that she could. "You don't need to know my name, just as I don't need to know yours for us to work together."

The lieutenant eyed the fearsome stormtroopers arrayed behind her, then gave a sharp nod. "Of course, ma'am. I await your orders."

The Devaronian nodded, pleased. She could already feel the heat beginning to rise beneath her robes, the sweat starting to bead on her skin as Felucia's oppressive humidity and the thick cloth of her robes contributed to raise her body temperature. She drew on the Force, let it rise within her body, the lines of silver tracing her anatomy and lowering her temperature to a more comfortable level, to the point that she was practically exuding cold air around her. She took another step closer to the lieutenant, and felt him stopping himself from taking a reactionary step backward. "I have read your reports regarding the most recent activity by the natives, particularly these Shamans who lead them. I have seen the scouting and surveying maps you have submitted, but I am not as familiar with this planet or its terrain as you are. So, for now, I require your services, and those of your men. I need to know where the largest concentration of these...Felucians are. Where they tend to gather, where their strongholds or villages or whatever you might call them are located. And I need you to take me there."

The waves of fear suffusing him suddenly seized, and the lieutenant had to work his jaw several times in order to find the words he would use to answer her. "Inquisitor...the reason we have not already gone to the place where the Felucians gather is because it is...it is impossible for us to get there, much less eradicate the savages entrenched there. The jungle is too thick for walkers and artillery, and I don't have enough men for a frontal assault, nor are any of them trained to deal with the Shamans, who...can kill with their _minds_."

"Which is why I, and those under my command, have been sent," the Inquisitor replied patiently in a tone of voice that suggested the reason for her presence should be abundantly obvious. "You will take me to this place, and you will support myself and my men and let me deal with those who can 'kill with their minds'."

The lieutenant took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. "Of course, Inquisitor." He turned to give orders to his subordinates, while the dark troopers and primal Terror Troopers spread out to find where they might be of most use. They left the Inquisitor to stand alone for a moment on the rusting, mildewed platform, and while her eyes looked out over the decrepit heights of the former Commerce Guild stronghold, her attention was on something far beyond what could be seen with the naked eye. Despite the darkening horizons, she saw the world in a kaleidoscope of shifting colors, twisting, warping, and convulsing all about each other in an infinite canvas that she could not only see, but touch, feel, taste, smell, and hear. The colors were effused by the fungus, the animals that moved through the jungles, the very permacrete and durasteel beneath her feet. She took a moment to bask in the beauty, the complexity, to pick out individual strokes and sample them for herself. She could feel the strange and exultant relationship this planet had with the Force in its entirety, how it was like an organism all its own, creating its own energy field to strengthen and feed the Force, to develop and maintain those who walked its surface. And the Force here was far from balanced, having descended to the Dark Side for unknown reasons, though most in the Inquisitorius who had studied the events on this planet for the last few years believed the imbalance had been resultant of the cataclysmic events that occurred here. She reached out with her own bands and waves of color to sample those convoluted strands that reacted to her presence, and she felt a moment of ecstasy as she touched the Dark Side on a deeper level than she had in a significant amount of time. She felt a smile crease her lips. She liked the taste of this planet. There was something true in the way it felt on her skin, the slimy caress that raised the hair on the back of her neck in pleasure. The Dark Side suffused this planet, bled into her skin, in a base and primal way. It was power in its purest, most wild form, as if it were daring all those who approached to attempt to master the passion it offered.

She looked forward to the challenge.

* * *

The stairs creaked with every step they took, their surfaces were slick with mold and treacherous with rust, though Foyi and Rayf descended to the ground from the top of the landing platform with little hassle. Foyi kept her discblade in her right hand, her left continuing to grip the railing of the stairs as she clambered down the slippery steps, her senses tuned beyond herself for any signs of danger or approaching threat. The miasma of the Dark Side made the waves of the Force sloshing across her consciousness tepid, cold, and bewildering; with such an imbalanced and ill world, it was going to be nearly impossible to rely on her danger sense to warn her of incoming assaults. And judging by the calls, shrieks, and roars she could hear in the jungle surrounding the Separatist ruins, this world was full of threats that she would prefer to have warning of their approach or ill will toward her.

She reached the spongy, muddy ground, the dirt and the mold slowly climbing up the lowest tiers of the stairs, her boots sinking deep enough to submerge the toes. She tromped through the scattered fungus and the debris left by wartime and dismantled by erosion. The Separatist compound surrounding her was a cluster of buildings constructed from severe permacrete and barred by durasteel blast doors, some of which hung open due to malfunctioned servos, or simply torn asunder by excessive force, the faded carbon scoring revealing the explosive sources of the energy required to rip blast doors free of their frames. Much of the permacrete was crumbling, the fractures that had formed in the walls and ceilings of the structures rife with mold colonies, their destructive growth having already collapsed two of the small buildings in the complex. Foyi waited for Rayf to walk down the last of the stairs and join her, and with hardly a sound, the two of them crept quickly and quietly through the complex, Foyi holding her discblade overhead in preparation for a telekinetic throw, while Rayf held his WESTAR-34 before him, his free hand resting on the hilt of his wan-shen blade, waiting to draw it if necessary. They peered into the dark recesses, the fading light slanting musty beams of illumination through the spore-choked interiors, revealing little more than overturned and empty crates, weapons racks, plasteel storage containers, and ragged bits of permacrete thick with mold. Occasionally, they found discarded and broken blasters, belts of grenades that had never been given the chance to be utilized, and blaster-scarred pieces of various models of battle droids. Much of the detritus was in the process of being swallowed by the jungle, and thus there was little left of use.

Foyi finished her initial sweep of the complex, wiping sweat from her brow and pulling uncomfortably at the collar of her shirt, as it was already sticking to her skin. How anyone could live on this planet for long, much less operate sensitive electronics and droids without major equipment failures, was beyond her. They had barely been here but an hour or more, and though the sun had already set far past the ragged and ridged horizon, the air was still stifling, as if she were walking around swaddled in a blanket in the dead heat of Yanibar's summer months. So far, she had seen nothing to indicate that this site had been visited anytime in the last ten years, and she pinched the bridge of her nose in consternation as she felt a migraine rising through her skull and down her _lekku_. It was so difficult to concentrate here, with so many turbulent waves in the Force, assaulting her mind like the endless crashing of water against a sea cliff, eroding tiny slivers of the cliff in the process. She focused on maintaining her mind within herself, closing herself off from the wider realm of living and unifying energy. She meandered through a ruined structure that had most likely been an armory of some kind, then walked out into the night air, her eyes momentarily drawn to the blues, yellows, and purples of the fungi all around her, noted how many of them seemed to be drooping and withered, burdened by the oppressive weight of the Dark Side.

She heard a shuffle, and instinctively raised her discblade again, but it was only Rayf as he passed in the shadows, walking through the black maw that was all that remained of one of the smaller buildings. Some sort of guard post, if the defunct autoturrets on the roof were any indication. She followed him inside, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom again, and saw the building held a collection of small rooms which appeared to have once contained an entrance and lobby area, an alcove protected by transparisteel where a guard had once been positioned, and several doors that led into other portions of the building. Rayf was in a crouch on the floor, his gaze remaining locked upon the permacrete directly before him. Foyi leaned against the doorframe entering the room and stifled a yawn; she felt more sluggish than she had before coming to this planet. "I haven't seen any sign that anyone uses this place for _anything_ since the Clone Wars. Perhaps Yuelo actually _did_ lie to us..."

Rayf did not even glance at her as he answered, his fingers coming down to trace some shape he saw in the mud and mildew scrawled over the cracked permacrete at his feet. "Maybe not. Have a look at this." She trotted to his side and dropped into a crouch, peering at the terminus of his gaze. Amidst all the mud and small clusters of mold, there was an impression in the mud that had yet to be disturbed by the jungle's perversions or running, ruinous water. The impression certainly looked to be the edge of a boot or foot, though the contours had sharper edges than was normal in boots, and where the apparent foot had stepped on the permacrete, there were scuff marks in the dust, as well as scrapes of lighter color where something metal had drug across the crumbling surface. Rayf met her gaze and said, "Something's been this way recently. Something of the droid persuasion would be my guess."

"A Battle Droid?" Foyi breathed.

Rayf shrugged. "Could be. The footprint fits the profile the best I can remember, and these scrape marks were made by something metallic. If it is a droid, it looks like it might be dragging one of its feet."

"So, a malfunctioning Battle Droid," Foyi surmised, her eyes sweeping across the floor. She scuttled forward in a crouching crabwalk, keeping the scrapes and partial smears in the mud that marked the passage of their theoretical droid. The tracks led to the far end of the room, where stood an open door barely large enough to accommodate someone of Rayf's width; though he was not overburdened with excess weight, the doorway and the passage beyond was claustrophobic in its contours, and she remembered that the original B1 Battle Droid models that had seen such prevalence throughout the Clone Wars had been little more than metal skeletons. They would not have required much space to move around, and were not afflicted with fears of tight spaces. She moved as quickly through the passage as she could, her hands catching on the ridges that had once held glow panels protruding into the space, making it tighter yet. She heard Rayf grunt behind her as the blasters on his back kept catching on those ridges; for someone who used to Force to reach full attunement and oneness with his own body, he was not always particularly grateful.

The thin tunnel opened into another space, a hallway perpendicular to the one they had just vacated, lined by open, identical doorways that allowed admittance to rooms that were carbon copies of each other, with short flights of stairs that descended into the cramped spaces within, occupied by slabs protruding from the far wall that might have been meant as beds. She had the impression that she was in a detention area, where the Separatists must have kept prisoners for detainment, interrogation, and eventual execution. These only drew her eyes for a moment, however, as she looked down at her feet and found more scrapes and tracks in the dust, numerous pairs of myriad sizes, all tramping over one another to form discombobulating smudges across the fractured floor. Rayf emerged from the passage behind her, glanced down at the floor, and gave a whistle. "Pure sabacc," he exclaimed breathlessly. "The ugly slug's as good as his word."

Foyi began checking the prison cells in a hurried, frenetic manner, her rational mind telling her Tama could not be here, as she would never stay within a cell that had no door or security system to keep her inside. But her subconscious, feeding on the illogical hope in her chest, thought she might turn into the next cell to find Tama waiting for her. There were plenty of signs that the cells had seen recent use, determined by the scuff marks in the dust and collected spores on the floor, the grime slicked across the durasteel surfaces of the cots, the occasional pile of excrement in a corner. Such remains still raised a tremendous stench when she approached, which suggested they had not been there long. She checked the interior of nearly twenty cells before she discovered there were no more to search, and she strode back into the hall between the rows, where she found Rayf at the end of the hall, examining a cylindrical power generator that was about knee height, its energy cells dark. She jogged to his side as he fiddled with the generator's controls. "The cells are all empty. And unlocked. But it looks like there were people in there recently. All of the cells show signs of recent habitation."

Rayf cursed under his breath, then slapped the top of the power generator. With a flash of light and an angry, temperamental growl, the generator hummed to life, its energy cells glowing with renewed power. Rayf made a few adjustments to the controls, and Foyi jumped in surprise as red-tinged energy fields sprang into existence in the open doorways of the cells, bathing the entire detention block in a crimson glow. Rayf stood, a satisfied expression on his face. "That's why there's no doors. They just switch on the ray shields when people need to be kept inside, and don't have to worry about doors being hacked, bashed, or blown open. It was pretty common for the Seps to detain their prisoners like this, though the cost of the energy requirements had to be weighed against the value of the prisoners in question. So if someone installed this generator after the fact to revitalize the detention fields must consider whoever he or she was keeping in these pens valuable."

"I think we found the Shepherd's holding area," Foyi breathed. She felt a tightening of her chest as she imagined Tama trapped behind one of those ray shields, alone, afraid, with no way out. Foyi had to turn away from the cells as the images her mind conjured became too traumatic. Rayf slapped the generator again, and the ray shields flickered off as the glowing cylinder powered down. Foyi cleared her throat so that the emotion welling up there would not strangle her, and was happy to discover her voice remained steady. "Though where could he have taken her? If she was here, she's been taken away quite some time ago. Perhaps...a week, or more?"

Rayf turned to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She could feel the serenity he was imparting to her, the calm assurance that her sister would be all right, though he did not physically say the words. "Can you sense her? Do you get an impression of her presence in the Force, a direction we might move toward?"

Foyi closed her eyes for a moment, finding the solemn, serene, and detached center of her being and using that as a foundation, a strong rock against the crashing, unfathomable waves, reaching out into eternity from it. When fully immerse in the present, when submerged in the Force, the past and the future had little meaning to her, existing simultaneously at the behest of her consciousness. She sunk below the lashing, tumultuous whitecaps and reached into the depths, sending tendrils and currents out to deflect the attentions and existences of other presences. She reached further, swimming deeper, ignoring the clamor of the Dark Side, its undertow threatening to throw her off her course, to set her adrift and be lost to its maddening passions. The presences of animals, beasts, and people arose in her consciousness, but she continued to shove past them, looking into events that had already occurred, and yet seemed to exist at the same time as her present. She began to see shadows, images, feel emotions of those who had passed through here; it took her a moment to realize the fear, anguish, and pain that assaulted her senses was too raw to have occurred much further than a week or so ago. But they were merely the top layer of an immense, haphazard swell of lost emotions and bygone lives. This prison had seen horrors, and the Force continued to hold onto the terror felt by those who had been trapped here, who had passed through onto new and unknown terrors yet awaiting them. She swam deeper, searching, her mind examining each presence, each set of emotions, for the briefest of seconds, before passing on, looking for something familiar.

And then, she found it, a presence she knew almost as well as her own, a mind so familiar and close to her own, she suddenly felt lonely realizing it was just an echo. It was Tama, lost in a miasma that slipped between various states of consciousness, her emotions suggesting more confusion than fear. Foyi had the impression that what little time her sister had spent in the cell block had been while she was deprived of cognizant awareness. Perhaps she had been knocked unconscious? Drugged? Stunned?

Foyi ripped herself free of the past with a gasp, becoming aware of Rayf staring at her. She felt drained, adrift, as though her mind had momentarily left her body entirely and was experiencing vertigo upon reentry. She stumbled, but Rayf caught her before she could fall, helping her remain upright until she could stand again on her own. Despite how much she had slept, and the meditative trance she had used for healing, her wounds still pained her, still made her weak, and stretching so far and deep into the Force was a taxing effort even when she was perfectly healthy. She met Rayf's gaze with a mixture of confusion, exhaustion, and the glimmers of hope as she exhaled heavily. "I think...I've got her."

Rayf opened his mouth to answer, but Foyi pushed away from him and trotted down the corridor between the old cells, ducking into the narrow passage they had used to enter the detention block. Rayf followed closely behind as she let her impressions of Tama's presence guide her through the narrow hall and back into the main room, the "lobby" of the Separatist outpost. She turned to one of the other doors leading out from the room, a door that was blocked by a blast door that refused to open, even when she keyed the control panel. Her hand came up and brought the Force to bear, and the blast door slid aside to admit her entrance. The presence of Tama was stronger as she proceeded through the doorway, coming into a small chamber that may have once been used for landspeeders, or even a single AAT repulsor tank. One entire wall had collapsed completely, admitting the grasping tendrils of dangling fungi and mildew oozing through the collapsed durasteel. The detritus-riddled floor had been disturbed recently and thoroughly, by both feet and something else that had swept dust, spores, and mold aside in great arcs across the fractured permacrete. The ruined wall on the far side would have been completely choked by the jungle seeping into its expanse, save for the fact that much of the fungal stalks in the middle of the cluster had been swept aside or savagely ripped asunder, as though something large and violent had moved through the morass with no intention of preserving the natural environment trying to reassert itself over the Separatist perversions. Foyi hobbled over to the ruined section of wall and peered out into the darkening jungle beyond, the lurid phosphorescence of the mushrooms and fungal stalks illuminating a path that had been carved through its mass, a path that was used often based on the state of decay and new growth struggling in its wake. A path that had been used recently. There was something far too clinical and precise about the way the path had been constructed, and Foyi assumed that it had been made by a repulsor vehicle of some kind, and not the hunting patterns of large predators.

Foyi stood in the doorway created by the collapsed wall and concentrated, reaching out further into the malaise of Dark Side energies intertwining with life forces that struggled with the metaphysical corruption seeping into their spiritual and anatomical aspects. The past presence of Tama was still strong here within the old speeder garage, but she felt a twinge of despair as she realized that her sister had been moved somewhere out into the jungle, where she could not hope to find her in the misty depths of the Dark Side, unless she was nearly standing atop her.

Foyi turned around to see Rayf picking his way across the floor, carefully studying the tracks and markings as he did so. He met her eyes as he crouched in the middle of the floor, pointing to a series of semi-circular marks that had shoved the fine dusting of spores to the far side of the room. "There was a speeder here. Maybe a repulsortruck; the marks left by its repulsors are large enough to suggest a sizable vehicle, probably so the Shepherd could haul several prisoners at once."

Foyi nodded, as though she had already surmised all this. "Tama was definitely here. She...was far away..."

"How do you mean?"

"I can feel her presence, but it's distant, and the circumstances of her stay here are difficult for me to sense. I think she was only barely conscious when she was held here, and remained so when she was taken away. I can't sense her anywhere past this collapsed wall...the Dark Side is too thick, and there are too many Force signatures out there to pick out any one person."

Rayf stood and clambered over the jagged permacrete rubble lashed together with fungal growths. He leaned out into the turgid night air, feeling the moisture-laden breeze on his face for a moment, and turned to her with a grin he did not really feel. "At least the Shepherd left us a handy trail for us to follow. Kinda gives me a bad feeling, though. The Shepherd has been careful about covering his tracks up to this point, but now that we've found the dead drop, there just happens to be a path cut straight through the thick of the jungle, apparently leading right to him."

"Perhaps the Force is with us," Foyi intoned, though she privately shared the same concerns Rayf had just voiced. "How long ago do you think it was before this was last used?"

Rayf walked out of the decaying hangar and knelt down in the mud, his fingers tracing the marks left by hovercraft and small animals that had found the artificial highway advantageous in their own treks through the jungles. "Maybe a week? More? I'm not familiar with these mushrooms, so it's difficult to determine the length of time they've been like this."

"And here I thought you were an expert on Felucia."

"Whoa! Put on your retrorockets!" Rayf replied, straightening to his full height. "Just 'cause I did a bunch of research on Felucia while you were busy lying around doesn't mean I have all the answers here, cousin. This planet is as new to me as you." He looked down the gap in the jungle created by the wide path, which curved back and forth around and above changes in the terrain, until the meandering nature of the trail obscured its farther reaches from both Rayf and Foyi's gazes. He looked back at her as he unslung the longblaster from his back, attaching a glowrod to its underside and flashing the cone of light it produced about the extremities of the path. "I would remark that walking through the jungles of an alien world in the dead of night, following the trail of a mass kidnapper and murderer to Force knows where is an extraordinarily bad idea. But..."

"Tama can't wait," Foyi supplied, gripping her discblade tighter. Coming from a species that had mostly evolved underground and in the shadowed places of the unforgiving world of Ryloth, despite having never personally been there, Foyi had little difficulty seeing in the dim light and oily shadows of the Felucian jungle. Despite this, Rayf's glowrod provided a cheerful spot of brilliance in an otherwise oppressively sickened wasteland of the Dark Side, and she was glad for the illumination it provided. She hopped over the rubble and out into the humid air, and together, the pair of them began following the trail at a brisk pace, watching their footing and the dark fungal stalks about them. They kept their senses pulled tightly to their own bodies, barely reaching out into the Force, lest the whispers of the Dark Side distract and overwhelm them. Foyi cast a glance over her shoulder, but the Separatist compound had already disappeared in the black silhouettes, only the severe rectangle of the landing platform barely visible over the incongruous skyline of foliage. She glanced above, and through wisps of clouds and a haze of rising moisture as the night inevitably cooled the Felucian surface was a dazzling starscape, great arms and clusters of lights that swept across the sky in completely unfamiliar configurations. It looked so different from the night sky on Yanibar, that Foyi found herself distracted as she attempted to identify what star systems she could, what stars and planets effused their light across time and space to create beauty on a world that had fallen so far into darkness. She wondered if Tama was looking up at the same night sky at this moment, and she found herself hoping such was the case.

The pair said little as they continued to follow the path carved by hovercraft, their senses tuned to the exterior environment with as much range as they could muster through the malaise of darkness. The calls of unseen animals and countless insects had grown more frequent as night drew its cloak over Felucia, to the point where the jungle had become nearly deafening with the cacophony of grunts, squeals, roars, and snuffling. Rayf and Foyi would stop often when some of those more resonant calls drew closer, Rayf covering the glowrod with his hand, or even dousing the light completely as they dropped into ready stances and reached out with the Force. At these moments, Foyi occasionally felt the Force signatures of large creatures, their thoughts all primal instincts, base hungers, and the needs for flesh in their teeth and blood in their throats. These signatures reminded Foyi of the voorcats she would have occasionally encountered in the wilderness of Yanibar, but these creatures were considerably larger and less likely to travel in packs. Rayf's eyes always opened wide in concern whenever they nearly ran afoul of these predators, which Foyi took as a sign to remain quiet, to reach into the Force and become as small and insignificant as she could manage. She did not fear the animals that prowled the depths of the jungles, but she did not want to fight them if it was not absolutely necessary; she had not come here to butcher the local fauna, and doing so would only cause enough noise and destruction to alert the Shepherd that they were coming.

When the predators passed, they continued moving, staying half-crouched as they scurried along the path. The trail wound about a ridge that climbed up into a series of ridges that went on for kilometers to their left, then plunged down a gentle grade of slippery mud and mold colonies that set Foyi's rugged traveling boots slipping and sliding, threatening a headlong tumble into the darkness below. Both Foyi and Rayf scuttled down the slope, making great swaths in the thick, liquid mud, freeing small rivulets of water that surrendered to gravity's inevitable pull. The glows effused by the fungi and Rayf's light revealed a flashing, reflective surface at the bottom of the slope, and only once they had drawn within meters of the strange sight did Foyi recognize it as water stirred by the moist zephyrs, the waves it created lapping at the soft shores of a sizable river. Foyi slid the last few meters to the bottom of the slope and nearly tumbled into that river, but calling upon the Force rooted her to the spot and arrested her momentum. Rayf slid to a stop beside her, his light flashing across the waters, casting strange shadows through the river's viscous liquid, the ripples languid and thick with spores. Before them stretched a river, a body of water that meandered through the jungle and out into the darkness to their right and left, its width unknown as the far shore could not be seen from their positions. The slope rose well over a dozen meters behind them, and the silhouetted jungle canopy, with intermittent phosphorescent glows of the far shore could be seen far above their heads, suggesting the river represented the bottom of a steep ravine. Foyi could see no further signs of the path beyond the waterway, which was not surprising, as any speeder able to barrel through the thick, tangled jungle would have little difficulty simply passing right over the surface of the waters.

Rayf pointed his longblaster down at the river, shining the light of his glowrod into the depths. "I can see the bottom," he remarked. "It's not that deep. Maybe half a meter."

Foyi did not particularly enjoy the idea of wading through the river before them without first knowing what was in those dark waters, be they strange chemicals or natural pathogens, or even predators simply waiting for oblivious humans and Twi'leks to try and fjord the width of the waterway. She stretched out with her feelings, sending tendrils of her own consciousness into the river below, searching for presences of more fauna that may find her feet a tasty option for its next meal. She sensed nothing initially, and opening herself to the Force only continued to invite the nearly insurmountable pull of the Dark Side to chew at her focus. She drew within herself again with a shudder, then gave Rayf a dubious look. "I hope you're not suggesting we wade through that."

Rayf gave her a pathetic look, answering in an infantile voice. "Aw, poor widdle spukamas doesn't like being wet?"

"We could just Force jump it. Or I could throw your juvenile ass across, since you seem deficient in telekinetic persuasions."

Rayf grumbled something under his breath about his difficulties in the more overt and exterior powers of the Force. He stood upright, still shining his glowrod into the limpid depths of wet darkness. "Considering I can't see what I'd be jumping across or into, I'd rather not launch myself into whatever rock-hard mushroom stalk or cliff face might be on the other side of this river. And getting tossed around by you once in this life is plenty for me. If you want to try any one of those things, be my guest, but I'm not afraid of simply walking."

"And if it gets deeper toward the middle?"

"I happen to float rather well, and I know how to swim. Do you?"

Foyi sniffed as she stashed her discblade on her back. "Of course." Without further ado, and to prove to him that she was not afraid of submerging herself in the waters before her, Foyi stepped into the river and began wading, keeping her hands at shoulder height as the waters first sloshed around her thighs, then began lapping at the equipment belt on her waist. The river was surprisingly warm, despite the advanced nature of the night, and had an oily quality to it that left a film on any exposed skin and plastered her clothes to her body like an adhesive. She walked awkwardly, her stride splayed wide as her boots found purchase in the sediment at the bottom of the river, her feet shifting awkwardly against the grimy waters that seeped into every orifice and pore of her lower body. She refused to show her discomfort on her face for no other reason than to deny Rayf the satisfaction, though the current of smug regard she felt from his direction as he followed her into the water revealed that he was not fooled by her facade. She purposefully strode forward, the water growing higher, splashing across her ribs and spraying droplets on her raised elbows, while her boots occasionally sank to the ankles in the slimy mud beneath her. Her foot turned on a stone and she nearly fell facefirst into the inky liquid, but she regained her equilibrium and kept moving. She had already walked several meters across the river, and the riverbed began to rise beneath her as the water receded centimeter by centimeter closer to her waist. Apparently, Rayf had been right; the river was not too deep, and neither was the current treacherous enough to sweep her offbalance.

She glanced over her shoulder to check on Rayf's progress, who was carefully stepping along behind her, his longblaster still in hand and held above his head. When he noticed her gaze, he gave her a grin, a flash of white teeth in the dark. "See? This isn't so bad. It's actually quite nice and warm. I'm getting tingly all over."

Foyi sighed in exasperation. "You really have to put a filter on what you choose to share with me, Rayf. I really don't need to know about your feelings, tingly or otherwise."

Rayf chortled, then opened his mouth for a response, which was interrupted by a sudden loud splash that sprayed droplets across Foyi's _lekku_. She whipped around to see Rayf no longer behind her, the waves lapping quietly as though nothing were amiss, like Rayf had simply disappeared from existence. She called his name, looking all around her in the darkness and in the process losing her sense of direction in relation to the shore she had vacated, as well as the still invisible shore she had yet to reach. Rayf did not answer, the only sounds those of the splashing water and the calls of creatures in the forest rising above her. Foyi's hand snaked over her shoulder, extracting the discblade from its harness in a single fluid motion and bringing it to bear. She called his name again, more desperately this time, putting the Force behind her voice so that it echoed off the walls of the ravine surrounding the river. "Rayf!"

She was about to reach out to him with her consciousness when there was another loud splash, and she caught of glimpse of the human's arm slicing through the water, flailing in struggle before it disappeared beneath the waves again. Foyi moved as quickly as she could to the spot where she had seen that arm, calling his name, though she knew not whether he could hear her. She could feel the tension in the waters around her, the struggle splashing waves against her abdomen and breasts, though she still could neither see nor feel anything definitive upon which she might act. She barely reached Rayf's last known location before the human came fully into view again, rearing out of the water with a spray of droplets, gasping and spluttering, his hands still gripped around his longblaster, which he was using as an unwieldy club against some _thing_ that had latched onto his torso and wrapped itself partially around his left shoulder. Foyi could not make out the specific features of the creature; everything was too dark and moving too quickly. She merely saw inky, glossy skin like a cloak soaked through with water, latched and stretched across Rayf's body, a body that was wide and flat, as though it had been squeezed in a garbage masher, its oblong head displaying a gaping maw of fangs that scissored together as its flabby jaws gasped open and closed. The thing was snapping at Rayf's neck and jaw, wriggled further up the height of his body as it attempted to latch onto his throat, while he seemed to be using a combination of his weapon and the Force to discourage it from doing so. He gasped as he tripped and was pulled under the foaming waves again, Foyi screaming his name.

Rayf bobbed up again, though he was without his blaster now, still spitting and coughing water as the thing that had latched onto him had wrapped itself around his left arm. "Get it off me!" he gasped as he struck it repeatedly with the closed fist of his right hand.

Foyi wasted no time in lunging to his side, her discblade extended and used as a lethal augmentation to her own punch. There was an unearthly squeal as the weapon drew blood, and the creature's hold apparently lessened, for Rayf was able to pry it off and flung it away from him. The leathery creature was still midair when Rayf followed through with a Force shove, and it gave another shriek as it went hurling away to the opposite shore, back from whence they had come, its flattened contours spinning it over and over like Foyi's hurled discblade. Foyi reached out and steadied Rayf as he continued to flounder in the water, uncertain of his footing. As he regained his balance, Foyi became aware that not all the currents being made were from him alone, but were coming from other sources, sources that were burning lights of hunger and base passion rapidly approaching their position from various points around the river. "Rayf!" she screamed, putting the Force behind her voice, imparting to him in a flash of telepathy the danger she felt surrounding them.

"Go now!" Rayf replied at the top of his voice, and she needed no further encouragement or explanation for what he meant as they both drew on the Force in concert, instinctively reaching out to the energy field beyond them and inside each other. The water surged in a rough circle immediately surrounding them as the air warped and rippled, and suddenly both human and Twi'lek were airborne, having called upon the Force to assist them in jumps gaining unnatural heights and distance. They were propelled out of the water, and for a moment, Foyi experienced a sensation of weightlessness, true freedom of movement as she arced over the remainder of the river they had yet to cross, trusting in her instincts that she was jumping in the correct direction, that her leap was carrying her where she needed to go. So focused on the leap itself and getting away from the things in the water was she that she forgot to anticipate the landing, and so the steep, muddy embankment met her legs suddenly and without warning, the shock of the impact shuddering through her and ruining her equilibrium. It was not enough to cause any damage, but she felt the wind blown out of her lungs, and she tumbled _lekku_ over heels down the muddy slope, until she arrested her roll with her left hand stabbing its digits into the mud and thick veins of fungus that grew there. She heard a splash nearby, and righting herself, she found the shore within a meter of where she had fallen, waves lapping and eroding at the mud near her head. She could still feel those hungry presences, lurking deeper in the river, but they refused to venture closer to shore, preferring to circle angrily in the deeper waters, unable to understand how their intended prey had so suddenly and completely vacated their last position. She reached out with both her hand and the Force, and found Rayf lying on the shore beside her, gasping and choking as he disgorged water from his lungs and stomach. Their hands met, and without a sound save for their gasps and the strangled choking vociferations emitted from Rayf's throat, they scrambled up the mud-slicked incline, using stalks of fungus and small mushrooms as handholds to aid their ascent. Only when they had reached a ledge several meters above did they stop to rest, and simply sat in the mud, regaining their breath in great gulping inhalations.

Foyi rolled over on her side, then pushed herself up into a crouch, resting her forearms on her knees and trying to center herself once again. She was quivering, a sensation she could not entirely blame on the adrenaline, exhaustion, and exposure to cool air in wet clothes. She looked to her left at Rayf, who spat the last stream of water and saliva from his mouth, then leaned back and lay flat on the ledge, running a mud-coated hand through his short, thin hair. Foyi crawled over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder; despite his heaving chest and shivering frame, she could feel that he was calm again, merely recovering from his initial surprise. She could see no lacerations or blood on his clothes, and with a gasp, she asked, "Are...are you alright?"

He tried to laugh and only managed to choke on more water in the back of his throat. "Just stellar."

"Did it bite you?"

"I...don't think so." He examined his hands, then gave himself a cursory inspection. "Looks like all my bits are intact, no chunks missing as far as I can tell." He sighed heavily. "Foyi? Next time I have the bright idea to cross a river on foot in the middle of an alien jungle, just throw my juvenile ass across the river instead, okay?"

She patted him fondly on the shoulder, then straightened to her feet, swaying woozily. "That's okay, Rayf. I wasn't planning on listening to you anyway." Rayf chuckled again, the sound devolving into strangled coughs, as Foyi resumed her trek up the slope, the mud and loose stones beneath her feet threatening to betray her footing and cause her to tumble down to the river below. After a moment, Rayf climbed after her, and with great effort, the two of them managed to crest the top of the ridge, their soaking clothes smeared with mud and spores, their limbs quivering from exertion, their foreheads beading with sweat in the oppressive humidity that continued to permeate the night air, the intermittent winds and light breeze that blew across their sides only managing to move the cloying moisture closer to them. Foyi gave a gasp and braced her palms on her knees, sucking in lungfuls of air; her limbs felt as though they were on fire, and her body remained upright through sheer force of will. Every time she took a large inhalation, she could feel the healing wounds across her ribs, the bruises that continued to linger in her limbs, neck, and cranium. There was a squelching sound as Rayf reached the ridge beside her, then she heard him give a heartfelt curse. "Sithspawn."

Foyi was about to inquire as to his issue, but she looked up and knew exactly what he was talking about. Ahead of them, as far as the eye could see in the darkness and the pallid light of the stars and jungle flora, the jungle had been swept clean by a great cataclysm, revealing a stretch of tortured, barren land dozens of square kilometers in size. It looked as though the surrounding area had been subjected to slash and burn war tactics, the evidence of heavy blaster scarring, shallow craters left by explosive ordinances, and the wreckage of starships and structures half-submerged in the mud suggesting this region had seen uncontrolled violence during the Clone Wars. The area was mostly flat, through the mud before them rose and fell in small ridges, pits, and troughs where rainwater had carved miniature rivers and wandering rivulets through the mud. There were craters made shallow by time and erosion, while small clusters of mushrooms and fungus stubbornly clung to the land in last bastions of wild growth, attempting to retaliate for the damage galactic conflict had brought to their world. The ruins of droids, vehicles, and spacecraft were merely black shapes in the night, their geometric contours in direct opposition to the amorphous slurry that was the wasteland before her.

Rayf squatted down in the mud. Subconsciously, he reached for the longblaster and glowrod affixed to it, but remembered he had dropped the weapon and tool in the river during the struggle with the creature lurking in its depths. He cursed under his breath as he searched the soggy pouches of his utility belt and the satchel hanging beside his waist, then withdrew another glowrod and flicked it on, shining it on the mud for several meters ahead of him. He began to pace a wide circle, looking for traces of the disturbance a repulsor vehicle would have created in the soft wasteland. Foyi crouched by his side, and though she had more than a small measure of experience in tracking and reading the signs left by both predators and prey, she could make no sense of the swirls of mud, water, and fungal matter that Rayf's glowrod illuminated. Apparently, Rayf was having the same difficulty, for he shook his head and gave her a plaintive glance, as if he were apologetic. "I have no idea what I'm looking at here, Foyi. If the speeder was through here recently, rain has already washed the traces away."

Foyi sighed in frustration. "Then we'll try a different approach." Foyi remained squatted beside Rayf, but she did move, did not feel the pain of maintaining such a position for so long as she submerged herself in the Force again. Rayf watched her, waiting patiently as she stretched out into the energy field of both the present and past, searching for the signature left by her sister. After a lengthy moment, Foyi gave a great gasp and fell back on her haunches, cursing under her breath. "I have a vague feeling that she was through here, but I can't divine a direction that we should follow. There're too many presences, too many memories. The Force is turbulent and confused here, even more so than what we've already found to be true on this world steeped in the Dark Side."

"Alot of people died here," Rayf surmised, reaching out to feel the emanations of the past war that permeated the wastes. The Dark Side twisted and percolated here in a more palpable manner than it did in any other place they had visited upon Felucia so far. They had stumbled upon a battlefield left by the Clone Wars, a wound upon Felucia's skin that continued to fester due to the infection of the Dark Side. He stood upright, worked the shoulder the creature had latched onto to alleviate some of the soreness he felt there, then drew the bladed head of his wan-shen in his free hand. He looked to the Twi'lek to see a dejected expression on her muddy, grimy features, and offered her a smile. "Cheer up, cousin. We just have to look for anything that doesn't belong, and we'll pick up the trail again in no time."

"'That doesn't belong'?" Foyi echoed. She spread her hands to indicate the entirety of the wastelands before them. "You mean, like this whole blasted mud field?"

"See, there's one!" he replied cheerfully. "Just point out anything else unusual, and we'll be plotting a course to your sister in no time." He began to stride across the mud, but paused and looked back at her with a serious expression. "You come across tracks of anything large and likely to eat us, don't keep it to yourself, okay?"

Foyi did not justify his words with a response, as she had little patience for his levity. He may somehow manage to keep optimistic in the face of worsening odds and so shortly after nearly being drowned or digested by the creatures in the river, but Foyi felt only the same lingering desperation and hopelessness that had been plaguing her ever since Tama's kidnapping. She was so close to Tama now, she believed she could almost taste it, but it seemed no matter how far she came, no matter how close she actually drew to the day when she would see Tama again, the more obstacles arose to stand in her way. Together, they began a sweep of the wastelands before them, Rayf using his glowrod, Foyi, her familiarity with Tama's presence. Their feet sank deeply into the mud, their boots making sucking noises as they were continually withdrawn and plunged into the soup in which they walked. They passed the remains of droids, discarded bits of armor that Foyi only vaguely recognized as that which had belonged to the clone troopers simply because its design was so similar to those used by contemporary stormtroopers. She walked forward, her consciousness extended out into the immediate external environment, letting the Force guide her movements, as though she had activated a personal radar, and whenever she drew close enough to a location where Tama had spent time or passed through, she gravitated toward it with careful, measured steps. Rayf followed her, providing light ahead of their movements, the glowrod's illumination occasionally playing across the rusted hulls of wreckage they passed, bringing the ghosts of the Clone Wars to light one final time before they continued onward.

They proceeded across the old warzone for an unknown amount of time as the night deepened and the wind began to pick up, bringing a chilly bite with its currents that caused them both to shiver in their damp garments. Foyi looked over her shoulder, back at their footprints, and saw they had been carving a trail that wandered back and forth across the mud, suggesting travelers who knew not where they were truly going, nor how to reach their desired destination. She pushed the doubt away in her thoughts and dove beneath the waters of the Force again, letting her feelings rest and calm, letting the Force provide insight and guidance as to what direction to face that would ultimately lead them to a reunion with her sister. Their trek was slow and ponderous, the mud only growing deeper and clinging more tightly to their feet and calves, the squelching noises it produced beginning to grate on Foyi's nerves the farther she walked. Fortunately, she found a strip of stony land bisecting the nearly-liquefied battlefield, and began to walk across it, the feeling that Tama had once been near hovering on the very vestiges of her consciousness. Rayf shown his glowrod ahead, the cone of light it produced stretching into the darkness and reflecting off slimy, glistening surfaces. It took Foyi's eyes a moment to adjust, but she recognized those surfaces as stalks and bodies of small species of fungi, the very outskirts of the forest reclaiming the land scarred by war. They had reached the jungle's depths again, and Foyi ran ahead until she began to walk amongst the mushrooms and stalks of bulbous fungal flora, though there was no path in sight like that which had been left by the speeder before.

Rayf shown his glowrod in an arc, but the tangle of jungle was all that greeted his light, forest that was uninterrupted in its rampant, virulent growth as far as the eye could see. "I'm beginning to think that this might be easier in the daylight."

Foyi could not argue with him; the thought of continuing their search when the had the benefit of morning's light was an appealing one. But the thought of Tama having to survive another night in this strange and alien place, to spend another night at the mercy of the Shepherd, bid her to continue moving, to close the distance that separated them.. "Come on," she growled, stalking the edge of the forest and turning to her left. "The trail's gotta be around her somewhere. I'm still getting the barest hints of Tama's presence in the immediate area. Besides, we're still on the opposite side of where we were across the ravine, yes?"

Rayf scratched his head, looking to be at a loss. "Honestly, I got a little turned around when those swimming mynock-things tried to chew my face off. I couldn't really say."

"Well, just keep looking. We'll find it, even if we have to search this entire battlefield."

Rayf gave her a determined nod and opened his mouth for a verbal agreement, but he was interrupted by the sound of something large, unwieldy, and weighty crashing through the jungle about a dozen meters ahead. Foyi stopped dead in her tracks as a cold wave of pure threat born upon an undercurrent of Dark Side intent hit her fully in her heart, and she instinctively threw herself to the ground, dropping into a ready crouch with her discblade held in front of her. Rayf squatted beside her, his glowrod flipping off and plunging the immediate area into pure darkness, while with the same flurry of motions, he began to assemble his wan-shen and held it before him, poised for a stab into whatever may emerge from the darkness beneath the forest's canopy. Without the glowrod's illumination to obscure and narrow her vision, Foyi could better see the stripes and patches of phosphorescence that shown from individual stalks of fungus within the forest's depths. She peered ahead, and sucked in a breath when she realized that some of those phosphorescent patches were moving, random striping that outlined the contours of an immensely large creature, haphazardly barreling its way through the jungle toward the pair of them, though judging by the speed with which it moved, Foyi doubted it was specifically targeting them. Rayf saw it too, and signaled that he was moving to the right and out of its way; Foyi followed closely on his heels, and they hid themselves in a snarled thicket of mushrooms and twisted, bulbous stalks. They waited, making themselves as small and close to nonexistent in the Force as they could, keeping their breathing barely audible and still.

They did not have to wait long for the creature to fully reveal itself. It stood several meters in height, but still not tall enough to rise above the the tallest of the mushrooms and fungal trees that comprised the deepest parts of the Felucian jungle. It was mostly bipedal, standing upon widely-splayed pachydermic hind legs, while its overlong forearms provided maneuverability by pressing its knuckles into the mud before it. It strode forward in a thunderous approach like an immense ape covered in hoary, wrinkled skin akin to durasteel, rather than an epidermal sheathe. Its head was one large, squashed protrusion of abhorrence, with small, beady eyes that gleamed in the dark, humongous, flared nostrils, and a maw filled with ragged, mismatched fangs. Phosphorescent stripes of paint had been lathered along its flanks and limbs, further slashes decorating the contours of its face and only serving to make it more hideous and far more terrifying. Foyi struggled to remain calm upon seeing the creature, for she was familiar with the species of vicious predators known as rancors by reputation and holograms only, and had wished to never meet one, much less be within a half dozen meters of one.

As the rancor drew closer, the stench of its musky body odor, decaying flesh, and fresh blood all assaulted her nostrils at once, and she had to make an effort not to gag. She kept her Force-enhanced senses close to her body, wary that it might sense her if she reached out or was not actively concentrating on trying to disappear into the background of the universal energy field. Even so, her empathic senses briefly touched the rancor's mind and regard, and she found a surprisingly intelligent slurry of thoughts, sensations, and feelings revolving around hunger, suspicion, and primal anger. It was profoundly disorienting, but as her consciousness brushed that of the rancor's, she became aware of another presence, denoting a far more developed and evolved consciousness, albeit one that felt even more primal and savage than the beast's, for it had been steeped in the Dark Side. Tentatively, she reached out with a single, quiet current to identify the source and location of this second mind, and found it to be moving in tandem with the rancor's, as though they were sharing the same body. She furrowed her brow in puzzlement, but then she felt Rayf's fingers brush her elbow to get her attention, and when she looked at him, he was indicating a spot just above the rancor's nearly nonexistent neck and mountainous shoulders. Foyi followed the imaginary line from his index finger, and gave a small gasp of surprise as she saw a smaller biped sitting astride the rancor's shoulders, apparently giving the beast direction and motivation through a series of clicks, grunts, and barks that sounded vaguely like articulate speech, though it was in a language she did not recognize.

Foyi leaned out of the strands of fungus just enough that she might gain a better view of the creature that so boldly used something as powerful and indomitable as a rancor for a means of traversal over the hostile landscape. The alien was vaguely humanoid, though its thick limbs were more akin to the rubbery stalks of Felucia's native flora than the hinged appendages of Rayf and herself. Its arms seemed to have another pair of smaller, vestigial limbs that branched off from their elbows, with the prominent pair ending in webbed protrusions not unlike suction cups, and the thinner, lower pair possessing a trio of digits that were obviously fingers. Its legs, which held its body fast to the rancor's hide despite the loping gait of the lumbering beast, ended in a similar quartet of webbed digits, while its thick, muscular body extended upward to a head that seemed little more than a hideous mass of tendrils drooping across and about a face that appeared to be a pair of vacuous black eyes and a gaping sphincter of a mouth not unlike that of the rancor upon which it rode. The Dark Side veritably seeped off the alien, and Foyi found herself pulling back her extrasensory regard almost immediately from the barest moment of contact she had with the creature, for she could sense the creature also searching beyond its physical senses. It was a Force-sensitive, one with little more than raw, unbridled talent, its body and mind a tangled bundle of passion, bloodlust, and dark intent she dared not attempt to fathom, lest she be drawn down into the cold depths again with it. Perhaps this was a member of the Force-sensitive natives Rayf had suggested might have been living across the surface of this world, and maybe at one time, the alien had simply lived and minded its own business as it tried to make a life for itself in the unforgiving jungles. But like the rest of this planet, the alien had reached out into the Dark Side, and received an answering touch, one that had promised great power at the cost of absolute corruption. The alien's presence was even worse than what she had had to endure in the company of the Sable Dawn assassins, making her physically ill just by the briefest of mental brushes against the creature's regard.

The alien suddenly gave a loud chuffing noise that became an eerie howl, and the rancor swung around, growling so deep in the back of its throat that Foyi could feel the vibrations in her teeth. Together, master and beast began to lumber through the jungle, crushing mushrooms and twisted sprouts of moss and mildew in its wake, its lengthy arms reaching out to push aside the tallest and thickest trunks of fungal material. Both Foyi and Rayf tensed, raising their weapons and resettling into crouches from whence they could spring if necessary, which was looking more likely with each passing moment.

For as they crouched in fear and anticipation, the rancor and the Felucian straddling it moved inexorably closer, both emitting hideous growls and suffusing the surrounding atmosphere with the miasma of the Dark Side itself.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Tama sat beneath the window from which hung the tattered remnants of a transparisteel barrier, feeling the sickly, humid breeze of Felucia's night air slipping across her _lekku_ like a moist rag. She was breathing slowly and evenly, attempting to ignore the gnawing pains in her stomach and catching her breath from the amount of effort she had just expended explaining the only idea she had been able to generate to deal with the confinement caused by the ray shield generator in the courtyard far below them, and thus ensure their escape from their current predicament. Nuri, the Bothan boy named Fenn, the obnoxious and wheezing Rodian Farr, the quivering Twi'lek boy Otar, and the introspective and uncomfortably silent Duros Cyran were arrayed in a semicircle about her. They had arranged themselves on a variety of ruined and moldering slabs of furniture, or spots of the floor in the suite they had decided to occupy or exhaustion had dictated they perceive as comfortable. Some of them lay flat on their sides or stomachs, facing her as she finished speaking, while others sat upright, though their bodies swayed as though they might fall over from maintaining such a simple but vertical position. All of them were starving, abused, frightened, and nearly delirious with weariness and the lethargy brought

on by the absence of adrenaline coursing through their systems. But all had been attentive as Tama spent the better part of an hour or more outlining her plan, which, while simple, required an arduous amount of explanation and several impassioned attempts at convincing them of even attempting such a thing.

Attempts that had yet to be successful, Tama mused, as she looked in turn to the expressions of her fellow captives. They each represented different species and cultures, and therefore possessed a variety of ways in which they expressed the same concepts and emotions. But there was no denying the startlingly similar expression of abject disbelief that was across all of their faces. All of her fellow prisoners were looking at her as though they expected her to suddenly transform into one of the ravenous Rakghouls that Pash had conveyed to her in some of his more colorful spacers' tales.

Tama waited another agonizing moment, too tired to reach out with the Force and get a sense of exactly what they were thinking. With a sigh, she asked simply, "Well? If anyone's got a better plan, I'm willing to listen."

The fur on Fenn's face shifted noticeably as he cleared his throat. "Here's an idea: You don't get to make anymore plans. Not after the insanity you suggested we attempt."

"Is madness," Farr agreed, bobbing his oblong alien head.

Tama threw up her hands in desperation and irritation. She turned to Nuri, the closest thing to a friend she had amongst this group of survivors, of prisoners. "Nuri, you _know_ we can do this."

Nuri looked as though she wanted to support Tama, but could not bring herself to do so due to her own sense of disbelief. "Tama...in the last day, I've seen you do several incredible things. You convinced a starving boma not to eat us, warned us when the droids got too close, and even called a blaster to your hands from across a room. With your mind. But this...this is something entirely different. And the way you talked about this...well, you don't sound all that confident about any success in this absolutely crazy plan, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me, or anyone here."

"You complete laserbrained," Farr hissed, jabbing a cup-tipped finger in Tama's direction, as if he were accusing her of a criminal act. "What makes you think you magical?"

Tama's _lekku_ twitched in exasperation even as she sighed. "It's not magic, as I explained earlier. The Force is the energy that unifies all of reality and the universe, and maintains life wherever it may be found. Some people, like myself, like the Jedi of the Old Republic, like the _karking_ Sith for Edge's sake. Just 'cause you can't see or feel it doesn't mean it isn't there."

"But _you_ can?" Otar asked skeptically. "How convenient for you."

Nuri whirled on him angrily. "Hey! Don't dismiss this...power so readily. You think that blaster Tama gave me just crawled across the hangar on its own?"

Otar shrugged, as though such an occurrence was so common as to not be consequential. "Honestly, I'm not sure _what_ I saw back there. Strange things happen in this galaxy, and none stranger than during battle."

Farr scoffed, a rude, nasally noise emerging from his snout. "Like you fought many battles."

Otar looked sheepish, but still mumbled vindictively. "You don't know anything about me."

Fenn was absentmindedly twitching his ears, a gesture Tama took to represent careful consideration on his part. "This...plan you propose...it can't be the only way we can bring down the shield generator." He looked down at the holdout blaster he continued to nervously palm in his hands. "We found this hidden in the ruins. Maybe there are other, more powerful weapons concealed in the city, something that would be better suited to bringing down the ray shields. Like thermal detonators or ion charges or whatever."

Nuri snorted like she had just heard one of the most ridiculous courses of action in her entire life. "'Thermal detonators'? 'Ion charges'? Whaddya think this place is, a Hutt's armory? The son of a barve that trapped us here hid supply and weapon caches to give us something to fight over, but there's no way that anything in those caches is powerful enough to bring down those ray shields. Look at that blaster in your hand; that thing's barely able to bring down a Battle Droid, and those clankers might as well be made of flimsiplast. The only reason you found that thing was because 'the Savior' allowed you to, and that was only because he wanted us all to fight and kill each other for it. There isn't going to be anything within these ray shields with enough punch to knock out the shield generators."

"So you're actually _considering_ her barvy ideas?!" came Otar's incredulous response.

Nuri bit her lower lip as she cast a guilty glance Tama's way. Tama could see that the Zabrak girl wanted to support her, wanted to believe in what she was suggesting. Of those gathered, she had seen the most direct evidence of the Force through Tama, and while she at least believed in the Force's existence, she could not know the extent and reach of the Force, nor Tama's own skills with it. Which were nothing to comm home about even when she was not so weakened by her current circumstances. Tama could understand Nuri's reluctance to support her, though part of her was yearning for Nuri's confidence in her, if for no other reason than to give herself a modicum of self-confidence in her own abilities. What she had proposed for a plan was almost entirely dependent upon a Force ability she had discovered to possess only hours before, and was uncertain she could replicate even under ideal circumstances, even fully hale and prepared with considerable practice and training. Her plan was desperation incarnate, but her instincts told her that if they did not adopt a course of action that was not only risky but unexpected, then they would soon find themselves no longer in a position to take any action that would facilitate their mistake. Even now, their captor could be listening in on them, could be evaluating the plan she had just proposed, could be ordering more droids to search through the ruined city until they found them hiding in these upper apartments and blasted them all.

Nuri finally threw up her hands, as though the discussion did not matter in the slightest. "It's...completely vapebrained, I'll admit it, and it requires us to put a lot on faith. Especially considering none of us know each other well. But Tama's the only one who's proposed a plan so far, and though I'll be the first to admit it doesn't make sense, if she can actually make it work, it may be our best play at escaping this compound."

Cyran remarked aggressively to that comment, jabbering fervently in Durese, her scarlet eyes devoid of pupils rolling in their sockets to almost imperceptibly to show that she was addressing everyone present, though Nuri was the only one who could at least partially understand her. Nuri nodded, still biting her lower lip. "Cyran says that whether we try this plan or another one to bring down the shield generators, it'll be worth a bucket of Hutt drool anyway," Nuri provided for those not versed in Durese. Cyran seemed indignant at the Zabrak's translation, which Tama suspected was more cultured than Nuri had presented it, but Nuri continued unabated anyway. "We knock out those ray shields, we can get out of this city and the prison we're caught in here, sure. But then all we have to deal with is the untold kilometers of trackless jungle over the surface of Felucia, as well as settlements and cities probably in similar state to the one we're in now. This planet was hit hard during the Clone Wars. I...I don't know much about it, but there's little left here but ruins, hostile natives, wild creatures like that rancor, and maybe even Imperials. Once we're out in the jungles, there's not much out there that can help us get offworld."

Tama gave her an introspective look. "You said the Empire's here as well?"

"I said 'maybe'," Nuri clarified haughtily. "And even if there were, I doubt they'll be in a friendly mood. We can't rely on them, whether they exist or not, to get us off this hellhole."

Fenn rapped his clawed digits across the burned and scarred floor at his feet. "Nevermind Imperials. The bastard who put us here has to have a way offworld...or, at least a way to get people like us down here. Maybe we could locate where the 'Savior' has his ships, and get off that way."

"It heavily guarded, surely," Farr chimed in.

Otar was nodding along with Cyran, who murmured her own agreement. "There would probably be more droids. Maybe some monsters, or 'the Savior' himself. But with more blasters, a little luck...whatever magical powers _you_ have, Tama, if you really do have them, maybe we could seize one of his ships."

"Do any of us even know how to fly a ship?" Fenn asked skeptically, more to make certain the others did not get ahead of themselves.

Cyran raised a hand, as did Nuri. The Zabrak gave the Duros a smile, then faced the Bothan with confidence in her eyes that belied the desperation of their current situation. "If it's got a navcomp and a hyperdrive, I can fly it." Cyran chattered something that sounded agreeable, and the Zabrak nodded appreciatively. "Cyran says she can fly it better than I can; I'm willing to take her up on that challenge. Assuming we can get ourselves a ship."

"That's a huge assumption, considering we've yet to get out of this city," Tama replied, wishing to similarly curtail the enthusiasm and speculation on events that had yet to pass, in an uncertain future that was filled with negative possibilities for the group of exhausted, starving, and abused children. "And to do that, we need to get those ray shields down."

"We're going to need a lot more weapons," Nuri replied mournfully, cradling the A280 Blaster Rifle in her lap as though it were a precious heirloom or a talisman of good luck.

"The droids have plenty of those," Otar suggested. "We did so well against them back at the hangar...all we have to do is blast a few more, take their weapons, and everything will be astral. We won't need your laserbrained scheme, Tama. We can just blast the shield generator with the weapons we take and get out when the shields come down."

Tama pushed herself up to her feet, groaning with the effort of doing so as the lactic acid in her overtaxed limbs sent painful shivers through her legs and knees. She turned around and peered down into the courtyard several floors below, the droids patrolling its perimeters easy to spot due to the flickering lights emitting from some of their carapaces, as well as how they were silhouetted against the glows exuded by some of the mushrooms and fungi growing thick over the detritus in the courtyard. A quick visual scan revealed the droids to have steadily increased in numbers that were certainly fatal for the ill-equipped and poorly prepared band if they dared venture within a dozen meters or more of the courtyard. She shook her head, trying to still the fearful shiver that vibrated through her _lekku_ as she did so. "There has to be almost two dozen droids down there now surrounding those generators. He knows we're after it now, and won't let us get close enough to do any damage, much less steal weapons." She turned to the others with a distraught expression on her face. "We were lucky in the hangar; had that rancor not crashed the party, we would have all died in those ruins back there, no matter how good of a shot Nuri apparently is. We go anywhere near that courtyard and those generators, we'll be cut down immediately."

Cyran addressed Tama, her expression twisted into a grimace that the Twi'lek assumed was quizzical. Nuri translated for her, asking, "They're still all battle droids, right?"

Tama looked back out at the courtyard for a moment, then nodded. "As far as I can tell. Why?"

Cyran posed another question, which Nuri supplied further translation for. "If they're all battle droids, that means they're not very smart. Little more than blasters on legs, built to shoot first and ask questions later, and only capable of executing simple commands and heuristic functions. Wouldn't it be simple to distract them then?" Nuri's eyes opened wide as she caught onto the hovertrain of thought Cyran was suggesting. "What if we drew a few of them away at a time, just enough to handle with what we have and steal the weapons they carry?"

The others considered this suggestion for a few tense moments, the only sound that of the creaks and groans of the wounded building settling as it slowly succumbed to Felucia's gravity, as well as the eerie whistle of the humid night wind carrying through the gaping windows. Fenn was the first to speak, asking, "How much ammo do we have left?"

Tama checked the readout on her E-5 Blaster Rifle she held at the same time Nuri examined her own. "I still have plenty of shots," the Twi'lek answered.

"I'm running low," Nuri replied in a grim voice. "But not so low that I can't bring down a few battle droids. Or maybe a super or two."

"Too dangerous," Farr squawked in protest.

"This whole planet is dangerous," Otar countered. "If we want to leave, we're going to have to take risks. I say the possibility of getting our hands on some more weapons and ammo is worth that risk, if it allows us to get out of this place."

"If we do get these weapons, could we maybe shoot the shield generators from a distance?" asked Fenn.

Tama was about to respond negatively to that, but Nuri beat her to the punch with a sneer and a shake of her head. "The generators are in an armored bunker, not plastered on a flashing holotarget. Even if we get these weapons, they won't get us any closer to the generators; simple blasters aren't going to punch through that plating, nor those blast doors. And there's going to be all those droids in between us and the generators." She heaved a great sigh, then gave Tama a weary smile. "I hate to say it, but unless anyone has some seismic charges they've been saving for a special occasion, Tama's plan is the best we've got."

The others looked largely uncomfortable, and both Farr and Fenn seemed desperate to come up with any course of action beyond the insane scheme Tama had formulated. But after several long moments, no one offered any further notions, and it was with reluctance that they nodded their begrudging assent. Tama felt a knot drawn tighter in her gut, one that had nothing to do with the gnawing, ravenous hunger that continued to vex her. She was not certain she should be happy that they had agreed to her plan, because despite her assurances, she highly doubted she was up to the challenge she had presented herself. But such was the nature of forcing people into such untenable positions as the one they had been thrust into. The prisoners had nothing left to lose, and therefore were willing to risk everything they had on what could turn out to be a spectacularly poor set of circumstances.

Tama breathed a resigned sigh and tried to maintain her focus, willing herself to become divorced from her anxiety and pain. _May the Force be with us all._ "Then we try to draw a few droids away and get their weapons," Tama proclaimed. "And then...we'll see if we can make ourselves a new ally willing to bring down that bunker for us."

* * *

The children lurked in one of the alleyways on the opposite side of the courtyard from the building they had taken temporary refuge in. Tama and Nuri were once again in the front of their procession, though such an arrangement was fortuitous for all present, considering they were the only two with any significant armament. Otar, Fenn, Farr, and Cyran all crouched just behind them, save for the Bothan boy, who leaned against the grimy, carbon-scored wall of an abandoned, multileveled restaurant with his holdout blaster pointed skyward by one of his nervously twitching ears.

Tama and Nuri peered into the shadows cast by the glows of Felucian vegetation and the light streaming from the energy discharges of the ray shield generators. This close to the bunker and the key to their escape hidden within, Tama could not help but feel the apprehension at having to attempt to get through the bunker's blast doors and the keys to their escape. The two dozen heavily-armed, if not entirely functional, battle droids patrolling the intervening space between the center of the courtyard and the passage through whence they peered would be more than a slight deterrent as well.

Nuri hefted her A280 Blaster Rifle, placing the stock against her shoulder as easily and fluidly as though she had been born with the blaster attached. She looked back at Farr, the Rodian crouching beside a pile of detritus and jagged bits of permacrete, then nodded to him as Tama hefted her own weapon. The Rodian made little more than a whisper of sound as he picked up one of those permacrete shards, then with a surprisingly well-aimed toss, sent the refuse whipping over their heads and into the courtyard beyond. Tama almost cheered when the fragment clattered off the back of a battle droid's oblong head, nearly knocking the poorly-balanced and barely functional machine over. The action elicited a high-pitched whine of "Hey! Who threw that?!"

The droid's distress attracted the attention of one of its fellows, a super battle droid whose duranium plating was so corroded and battle-scarred, it was a miracle of engineering that the machine was still able to walk around intact. The super lumbered over, keeping its right arm locked in an upright position, its gravelly voice broken by random bursts of static. "What is wrong with you?"

Farr cocked his arm back for another throw, but Tama halted his arm with a firm hand. They did not want to draw away too many super battle droids if they could help it; they had not the time, tools, or knowledge to extract the wrist blasters from super battle droids and use them as their own weapons. They needed to draw away more battle droids than anything else. The super battle droid gave the immediate area a quick sweep with its sensors, then turned back to the battle droid, and if a faceless automaton could look chagrined, Tama was certain she would see such an expression worn by the super battle droid. "You are malfunctioning again. You require maintenance."

"A rock just hit me in the head!" the unfortunate B1 protested.

"Of it's own volition?" The B2 sounded truly sarcastic.

The battle droid actually spluttered slightly as it stood motionless for a lengthy moment, its processors turning the question over multiple times and finding no immediate answer. The B2 waited for a only a few seconds, then returned to its scheduled patrol route, leaving the flummoxed battle droid to consider whether rocks typically jumped up and struck anthropomorphic machines on the protrusions of their chassis that resembled skulls. Whatever answer it had generated to resolve its own question, it did not voice aloud, and began walking its own patrol route again.

Tama removed her hand from Farr's wrist, and the Rodian hurled another jagged clump of duracrete, this time with enough force to bash the back just below its scrawny neck, rocking the droid forward as it squawked loudly and nearly dropped its weapon in the process. The battle droid spun on its heels, raising its rusted E-5 Blaster Rifle, then gave a shout as its sensors switched to an infrared spectrum and caught sight of the six children crouching in the dark alley. "Hey!" it called as it approached, its blaster swinging back and forth as it switched between targets. "You're not supposed to be here! You're supposed to be out there, being eaten by large predators!"

Tama's eyes flicked between the different shapes clomping through the ruins and fungal growth, seeing more of the skeletal ones close to the droid they had attracted beginning to take notice of the altercation. Tama allowed herself a brief smile she did not feel as Farr whipped the final stone straight into the droid's chest. Reflexively, the B1 fired a hyphen of laser energy as the rock struck the scarred armor across its chest, but the projectile threw off its aim, and the shot went wide, soaring off into the humid night air and briefly painting the courtyard in a garish, sanguine flash.

Immediately, calls and cries from other battle droids began echoing, and several of the dark figures began moving with janky, stunted, but quick movements toward them. Nuri hissed, "Run!", but none of them needed her encouragement, for they were all pelting down the alley in the direction opposite of the courtyard, and toward the main portions of the city. Tama, bringing up the rear of the fleeing prisoners, glanced over her shoulder to see several battle droids had been lured by their provocation, at least four of them, all shouting orders to halt, while occasionally contributing with strange, simultaneous calls of "Roger, roger!"

The children made it to the end of the alley, where it met an intersection of several such paths between tightly-spaced edifices she had not the time to identify the purposes for which they had been built. She jabbed alternatively at each alley peeling away from the one they were in, directing those without energy weapons to find hiding places, while she and Nuri took positions of cover behind rubble and refuse on either side of the alley they had just exited. Farr, Otar, and Cyran disappeared into the black shadows of the perpendicular alleys, while Fenn ducked around a corner and aimed with his holdout blaster.

The quartet of B1 Battle Droids stumbled into the intersection, their blasters sweeping the area, their voices hostile and confused, though they had yet to fire. Indeed, so focused on catching the children that had provoked them were they, that they had failed to properly scan their new surroundings upon exiting the alleyway. The lead battle droid fell flat on its chest with a keening wail as its clumsy, rusting feet caught the sharp edge of a slab of permacrete that had been torn asunder from the ground at their feet by some explosion courtesy of the Clone Wars battles fought here. The droid immediately behind the first suddenly found its comrade an egregious obstacle for its own clumsy limbs, and it went down in a heap as well, reflexively firing a shot that splashed across the wall dangerously close to Fenn, purely by accident. The last two battle droids had the presence of mind to take note of their fellows collapsed across the sprawled debris and each other, and halted just before following suit. Yet they were slow to process their surroundings, or realize the fact that their present situation was most disadvantageous to them. For Nuri and Tama took the opportunity presented them, springing from cover to fire indiscriminate blaster bolts into their carapaces, the rapid-fire bursts of Nuri's A280 and the slower but powerful energy discharges of Tama's E-5 blowing limbs from sockets and joints, melting armor, and punching holes through their chassis. The pair of battle droids collapsed, missing limbs and smoldering from over a dozen holes and blast points across their bodies, their constituent pieces raining down upon their comrades, who were struggling to get up. Fenn was the first to start firing at the pair of battle droids still active, two of his shots hammering into the shoulders of the battle droid on the bottom of the pile before the third sliced directly through the machine's angular head, nearly cleaving it in two lengthwise. The droid atop it, still extricating itself from its fallen comrade and the pieces of the final pair of droids lying astride it, never had a chance as Tama and Nuri's blasters poured fire into it, reducing it to little more than slag.

For a lengthy, breathless moment, there was silence in the intersection of alleyways. Silence that was broken by Tama's stumbling, hurried footfalls as she ran as fast as her tired legs could carry her to the pile of destruction that was once the quartet of droids, and ignoring the weapons strewn across the ground there, leaned into the alley from whence they had entered and peered into the shadows. For the moment, she saw no movement down its length, no signs of other pursuing droids. Nuri scrambled to her side, retrieving a discarded power pack from one of the droids and slapping it into her weapon to refill her ammunition, then beckoned the other children over, saying, "Come on! Grab what you can, then let's get out of here."

The other prisoners hastened to comply, and after a moment of rummaging through the heated droid parts, they had successfully armed themselves with weapons capable of bringing down any B1 or B2 battle droid they might encounter. They had collected another A280 Blaster Rifle, an E-5, and even one of the E-11 Blaster Rifles favored by stormtroopers, while Fenn gave up his holdout blaster in favor of a DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol Tama had serious doubts about his ability to effectively handle, though she was not going to waste time arguing about who should take what weapons from their defeated quarry. For just as the children were scooping up the weapons of their enemies, her keen senses had picked up the telltale sound of metal striking permacrete in rhythmic cadence. She was just beginning to call out a warning when a pair of Super Battle Droids appeared at the end of the alley. Everyone jumped back from the alleyway's mouth as laserfire erupted from its opening like a volcano of stuttering, scarlet beams. Tama fired her own retaliatory shot down the alleyway, rocking one of the supers on its heels, but doing little damage. The prisoners cried out in unison as they fled away from the alleyway, Nuri leading the charge from the intersection and down the alley that opened on the right side. The children ran as fast as they were able, which constituted a speed greatly increased over the slow and ponderous strides of their B2 pursuers, and it was only moments and several corners and turns later that they lost sight of the supers completely.

They continued on, albeit at a slower pace, for the exertion of their distraction and trap had caught up to them, and they found it difficult to even lug the blasters around, despite the fact that none of the weapons weighed more than a few kilograms. They paused to take a rest in another intersection, one that had a single alleyway opening into the city proper, where they could see the shadows and silhouettes of leering, battle-scarred buildings, could hear the zephyrs of humid air and the calls of predators and prey somewhere in the jungle beyond.

Cyran babbled something between gasps of ragged breath. Nuri chuckled in response, then hissed, "Well...stage one of our plan outta here's done."

Tama nodded, wiping sweat from her brow. "Now...for the hard part."

"Insane part, you meaning," Farr gasped, his voice reedy and wheezing through his snout.

"Which is why it's going to be so hard," the Twi'lek quipped, though she felt no true mirth in the comment. Only apprehension steadily rising to panic.

* * *

They had only allowed themselves moments to catch their breath, for it was not long that they heard the sounds of super battle droids in pursuit, their steps clanging in eerie echoes through the maze of alleys. Thus began a frenzied but mostly silent jog through the twists and switchbacks amongst the alleys, leaping over piles of detritus, colonies of mold and mushrooms, and ducking beneath the angular arches created by some buildings slumping into others as erosion ravaged their superstructures. They kept their course circular, always maintaining a general knowledge of where the courtyard was located in relation to them, and never straying farther than a hundred meters or so from the shield generators. At least, according to Fenn, who seemed to have the best directional senses amongst the group, which was only confirmed whenever they caught brief glimpses of the arcs of light that fed the umbrella of ray shields above them through the spaces of the towering and empty complexes about them.

Only when they had not heard the echoing sounds of clanking footsteps and the telltale "Roger, roger" of battle droids for several long, tense moments did they finally stop to rest again, to reassess their situation and prepare for the next stage of their hasty and desperate dreams of escape.

They stopped to catch their collective breath in the ruined and mildewed lobby of what had likely been a bank, judging by its arrangement, though Tama could not be certain, nor did she truly care. The other children, most of whom had been previously defenseless save for what little they might do with their scrawny and weakened limbs, were practically elated to now possess weapons, gaining their first real semblances of hope since they had been kidnapped. Nuri put a reassuring hand on Tama's shoulder, and Tama allowed herself to touch the Force, to feel the emotions of friendship and reassurance the Zabrak was giving off, becoming a conduit for courage and a renewal of purpose her friend did not even realize. "Pure sabacc so far," Nuri remarked in a low tone, attempting to sound far more confident than she felt.

Tama allowed herself a small smile that became a grimace. "We haven't even begun the hard part yet, but your optimism is...appreciated."

Nuri grabbed Tama's hand, squeezing her fingers tight, eliciting unintentional pain from the contact. "I can still come with you...help you...somehow. You don't have to do this alone, Tama."

The Twi'lek was shaking her head even before her Zabrak companion finished her sentiments. "No...it's better that I do this alone. If something goes horribly wrong, I don't want you anywhere near, where you could get hurt." Tama turned to face her, to meet her eyes, and they shared a moment of regret at the possibility that this may be the last chance they had for any meaningful conversation, that they may never have the time to develop their acquaintance forged by tribulation into the deep friendship the two of them believed would inevitably follow. If only they were granted the time to do so.

Nuri gave a mirthless laugh, almost a scoff, as though the dire circumstances under which they had met were the punchline to the galaxy's idea of a cruel joke. "If you hadn't noticed beforehand, this place isn't my idea of safe. Whether I'm by your side or crouching here in the mold, I'm likely to be hurt by something."

Tama conceded the point with a sad nod. "At least it won't be by a rancor's claw if you stay with the others."

Nuri's response was predictably glib. "It might. There's supposed to be a cargo hold's worth of rancors wandering this planet naturally; we're as liable to run into one as you are."

Tama's grimace communicated to the Zabrak that she did not find her levity particularly amusing, so Nuri let the forced grin leave her face. "This is the part of the plan only I have a chance to make work," Tama explained. "I'm the only one who could possibly succeed at this...I can't really even call it a plan. This is all so desperate, so off the plotted course, I don't know what to expect." Tama bowed her head and brought her fingers up to her temples to knead the flesh there, trying through tactile action to alleviate the tension, the fear, the pain that radiated through her skull, her body, her very soul. "I don't know if I can do this, Nuri. It could all fail so easily. _I_ could fail so easily."

"Then don't," came Nuri's simple response. "You're more than a simple Twi'lek girl from a backwater that doesn't even appear on most starcharts, Tama. You're something unique, something special, something that hasn't been seen since the Clone Wars. If anyone can do this, you can, and you will, because if you don't, we all die anyway."

Tama gave a mirthless laugh. "And that's supposed to reassure me?"

"Trust in yourself, Tama." Nuri smirked, shaking her head, as though astonished by what she planned to say next. "Trust the Force."

Tama, who leaned against the dusty, mold-spattered wall behind her, let her head fall back against it with a decided _clunk_ that reverberated through the spore-choked atmosphere of the sepulchral lobby, the only sounds those of the ragged breathing and furtive whispers of the other children, who had mostly ignored Tama and Nuri's private conversation. They were still focused on getting to know every aspect of the weapons they had just acquired, or making half-hearted complaints regarding the soreness in their limbs and the gnawing vacuum residing within their stomachs. Tama could see the exhaustion on their faces, the contrasting emotions of despair and burgeoning hope locked in deadly battle with each other. She would not help any of them by lying around, second-guessing herself; if there was a time to firm their resolve and keep them motivated, now was it.

Tama heaved herself to her feet, and Nuri stood beside her, keeping her blaster rifle held across her chest. Seeing the pair of them standing, the other children ceased their conversations and gave their full attention, their hollow regards making the skin on Tama's _lekku_ crawl. "What now?" Otar asked, cradling his E-5 and keeping his focus upon the female Twi'lek, denoting her to be the de facto leader of this group of prisoners. Whether she wanted to be or not.

"I'm...going to see what I can do to get those ray shields down," Tama replied, trying to keep the nervous quaver from her voice. "I'll be going alone, so as to put no one else unnecessarily at risk. If...if I'm successful, you'll definitely know. If I'm not...you won't be seeing me again." Her gaze caught Farr's multifaceted eyes, and she allowed herself a sardonic grin. "And I'll stop bringing you trouble."

Farr managed to look sheepish, but Tama continued, having meant the Rodian no malice. "If I get the 'help' we need to bring down that bunker, I'm going to have my _lekku_ tied with focusing on that task, so you're all going to have to keep the droids and any other unwelcome visitors off me. Nuri will be in charge of doing that."

Nuri stepped forward, her gaze fierce. "Tama's probably going to be taking some time to do her task, and in the meantime, I mean to whip you all into the youngest gang of blaster-happy gunslingers this side of the Perlemian. Once I'm confident that you can all handle those blasters without shooting your own faces off, then we're going to head back to the courtyard and take up flanking positions all around it. That way, we can start picking off the remaining droids while Tama's bringing our help, but not before, lest that karking psycho send more of them. So you will all do as I say, when I say it. Understood?"

Both Farr and Otar looked as though they wanted to argue with the Zabrak's assumption of command, but Cyran nodded happily, and Fenn merely shrugged, standing himself and saying, "Seeing how you handled those droids before, I doubt this is your first blaster fight, and you seem to know how to handle yourself. I'll follow your lead, Nuri."

Nuri gave him an appreciative nod, then glared at the Rodian and Twi'lek boys, who could not withstand that withering stare for long, and nodded their silent assent as well. Nuri then turned to Tama and squeezed her hand again, giving her a smile that was as frightened as it was encouraging. "Come back alive, okay?"

"If the Force wills," Tama replied, giving a great sigh and finally being able to let go of some of her anxiety. Now was the time to prove herself, and she refused to fail. Too much was counting on her now.

Tama left the dusty, moldering lobby moments later, offering no further encouragement and receiving none in kind. The band of prisoners who had chosen to reject the fate planned for them by their captor understood the stakes involved, that if they did not give their all to make this scheme work, they would most certainly die. Surviving, so far, had proven to be motivation enough, as well as an irrational but understandable desire to prove the nattering voice that invaded their heads wrong regarding their purported "sins". Tama felt a sharp stab of fear as she considered the fact that the voice belonging to their tormentor had yet to speak to them for the past several hours. Nor had the droids so clearly under its command tracked them down, so it was likely that the owner of the voice was not as omnipresent as it wished to appear, and did not always know where they were, or what they were doing. She supposed she should take comfort in that, though she could not help but wonder if the voice's extended period of silence was merely a ploy to lure them all into a false sense of security, to once again strike with its cryptic words, its oily presence, the migraines and sickening feelings that twisted their guts accompanying its pervasions. Perhaps their captor was fully aware of their desperate plan for escape, and was merely biding its time, waiting for the moment they would be most hopeful and therefore the most vulnerable to devastating counterattack. She found that she was shaking almost uncontrollably as the made her way through the debris-strewn alleys, heading toward the main sections of the ruined city. She found that she had to pause for a moment, just to regain her bearings and her composure, to reacquire the strength needed to press onward with her self-appointed tasks.

Tama resumed her trek, forcing herself to keep such depressing thoughts from her head. She recalled the teachings of the Zeison Sha her sister had done her best to impart to the willful and stubborn Tama. Foyi had always told her that for a Force-user, strong emotions could be both boon and curse, for the Force almost always surged in accordance with these emotions, allowing emotional stimuli to be used as tools for focusing and harnessing the Force within oneself. But with that power came a measure of control that had to be practiced, for emotions could imbalance her connection to the Force, to throw her dangerously out of alignment and therefore no longer able to control herself. Foyi had taught her to always find the calm center of her being, her "true self", whenever she felt as though she was in danger of losing herself to her emotions.

Tama purged herself from those emotions, from the fears and doubts that plagued her as starvation and exhaustion refused to relent from her body. It took effort both mental and physical, but she refused to let that deter her, reaching out to the Force around her and pulling it to her like a cloak, embracing it as it embraced her. Even on this diseased world, the Dark Side constantly bearing down upon her consciousness and crushing her spirit, she reached out to find the hidden purities of the Force, the sharpening of her senses and the clarity of simple existence she felt whenever she communed directly with its power. The sounds of the jungle, the wind curling through the stalks of mushrooms and fronds of fungi, the calls of animals and the chatter of insects, was all like symphonic music. The feel of that air on her grimy skin, stained by sweat, mud, and blood, was a refreshing breath. The darkness looming within the shadows of ruined buildings lightened as details resolved themselves to her eyes. The stench of her own body odor and the strange, musky scents exuded by the spores and molds became an aroma that was not quite pleasant, but was something _right_ , as though there were no other way such smells could intermix and present themselves. She opened her mouth to suck in another lungful of atmosphere, and it was like breathing for the first time after having to go without air for an indeterminate length. Here, even here, in this muddy, battered alley, on this broken and corrupted world, amidst the physical ailments and emotional trauma that ravaged her, was peace. Here was serenity. Here was oneness, rightness with the Force. In this moment, with the Force beyond her, and yet so easily within her reach, she felt as though she could truly do anything, and the plan she had created was suddenly executable, the goals attainable.

Tama made it back to the main portions of the city with little difficulty, the maze of alleys, rubble, and fallen buildings she had been clambering through opening onto streets strewn with the abandoned remnants of the Clone Wars, leered down upon by the ghastly, skeletal husks that had once been multifloored complexes and skyscrapers of thriving industrialization. Their flight through the city from the hangar of broken and discarded speeders had been hasty and motivated by fear, and so Tama had taken no time to commit landmarks or street names to memory. But she was one with the Force now, feeling as though she was barely tethered to the collection of endoskeletal musculature and sacs of organs that constituted her body. She was little more than present thought and base instinct, the most fundamental means by which a sapient being communicated with the Force and their surroundings. So she let those instincts be her guide, listened to the slight whispers, the shifts in the music on the edge of her perceptions, as she walked through the ruined city, ignoring the cries of the predators prowling and lurking somewhere in the depths of ruinous darkness. She walked through streets, over collapsed and burnt husks of gunships and hovertanks, of pieces of droids and the decayed armor of clone troopers. Her journey took her in a direction she could not place nor name, and yet she followed it because she knew no other choice, save for the one that felt right to her. She lost track of time, awareness of herself, her legs merely the instrument by which she transported her body across the ruined landscape, to the goal she had set for herself. They existed only to facilitate her upon reaching the hangar they had vacated amidst blasterfire and the shrieks of the rancor, and she could not help but feel like the polished stone she had used to practice such an arduous exercise back on Yanibar.

Tama lost all track of time till the sky began to lighten on one of the horizons, the first glows of morning slanting through the windblown spores that eddied between the heights of the edifices. Tama allowed herself to become more aware of her surroundings, and saw the hangar before her, one wall shattered beyond all recognition, much of the durasteel rafters that had supported its ceiling rent and twisted, allowing much of the ceiling to slump to the cracked and rubble-laden floor within. There were still wisps of smoke, stirred by the zephyrs of fetid wind, that curled out of the morass, from where blasterbolts had struck droid carapaces or the fallen walls. Nothing else moved in the rubble, though Tama could not help but wonder if she stood and watched long enough, if the hangar might not finally collapse in on itself. The rancor's fury must have been terrible to behold, for there was little left of the hangar standing, and no sign of anything that continued to live in the ruins.

Tama trotted to the hangar, leaping over large slabs of jagged rubble and the crushed remnants of the Tsmeu-6 Wheel Bike, identifiable only by the curvature of one of the metallic shards. Her eyes passed over it and the rest of the debris within the amorphous confines of the hangar, until she found wide, sweeping marks in the mud where a large pair of feet had shifted and stumbled about multiple times. The tracks left by the rancor were unmistakable due to their size and the severity with which they had been ground into the dirt, and she had no issue following them as they rounded the hangar's grave for several passes, then meandered off in a great, curving trail deeper into the city, through mud, trampled patches of mold and mushrooms, cracked permacrete, and dented scraps of metal. Tama now moved swiftly, no longer so lost in the midst of the Force, but maintaining a crouched position as she stalked in the rancor's wake, trying to make herself small, barely noticeable to physical eyes and sensations within the Force simultaneously.

The morning was already upon her, rays of smudged sunlight attempting to break through the roiling clouds of spores and the cumulonimbi that loomed overhead, when she heard the first sounds of irregular, guttural breathing. The trail had led her to the far edge of the enclosure described by the ray shields, judging by the faint buzzing across the back of her _lekku_ and the purplish tinge to the air several meters ahead and to her right. Here, the city had given way to an open space ringed by sidepaths along enclosures and walls created by flora imported from various worlds, likely having once been a recreational area of some kind before the Clone Wars, though almost two decades of neglect had practically destroyed it. What was left was a tangle of sickly trees overrun with mold and mushrooms dripping with dark moisture and drooping like the black, gnarled fingers of Sithspawn. The ray shields' perimeter bisected the tangle of fungi and pitted dirt, where blast craters formed random ponds of sludge-choked water. Within the darkest, most snarled tangle of fungi, the heavy sounds of respiration from enormous lungs could be heard, and out of instinct alone, Tama ducked behind a slab of broken duracrete that thrust into the sky at an acute angle. She peered around the chalky, tattered edge, and in the pitiful light of the sun and the eerie glow of the ray shields, she saw the dark, hoary hide of the rancor. Her eyes followed its bulk until she realized she was looking directly at its left shoulder; craning her neck farther, she peered through a space in the thicket, and could see the cruel, mashed face of the creature. Its lipless jaws were closed tight and splattered with sticky saliva, mucus, and dark liquid that may have been blood. Its high nostrils expanded and contracted in rhythmic cadence, while its dark eyes were closed. It would have looked peaceful, had it not possessed a visage that would give most sane observers nightmares for weeks on end.

Upon seeing it, Tama felt her calm shaken, the fear that she had let dissipate rising again in a sudden flood of emotion and extrasensory overload. She shoved it back down through sheer will alone, and let her heartbeat slow until she could no longer hear its thunder pounding through her skull. She peered around her chosen spot of cover again, fearing the rancor may have sensed her presence, but it was still asleep, grunting and growling slightly in the back of its throat as it took in great gasps of air through its slightly parting jaws and the wide slashes that served as its nostrils. Already questioning the merits of this plan she had created and her own ability to hold up her end of it, Tama reached out to the Force again for calm, then rounded the angular slab of duracrete and slowly padded over the muddy ground toward the thicket. As she approached, she sharpened her senses, stretched out with her mind and reached into the Force, into the immeasurable potential energy all around her, connecting her to the ground beneath her feet, the meandering spores in the air, the immense predator slumbering before her. The Force, as always, was omnipresent, and despite the taint of the Dark Side that continued to tear at her attention and confuse her senses, she pushed through the murky cloud of corruption, to the scintillating lights of presences within the Force, of life.

Tama had already drawn to the edge of the thick tangle of mushrooms and overgrown, alien flora when she paused, letting her eyes flutter closed as she gave all the attention she could muster to this one task. Her mind soared from her body, the physical world no deterrent to it as it plunged through the incredibly thick hide of the rancor, to dip warm fingers of consciousness into the brain of the creature before her. With her eyes closed and her attention no longer focused on her physical surroundings, Tama did not see or hear the rancor stir, but she felt it. Her mind had barely touched that of the rancor's when she had to pull back slightly in surprise, for she was assaulted by a sea of images and sensations that sharpened and faded at rapid and random intervals, a sequence she recognized. The rancor was _dreaming_.

Tama's eyes snapped open as she began reflexively backpedaling from the overgrown rubble and tangle of fungi as it began shifting around with great, earsplitting cracks and snaps of the thick strands and stalks of mushrooms. The rancor, roused from its sleep by the mental intrusion into its dreams, brought its overlong arms under its bulk and pushed off the ground, growling with the effort, producing a vociferation that sent vibrations all down the length of the Twi'lek's spine. The rancor's odd, blunted, and grotesque head rose above the thicket's canopy, its eyes fluttering open and closed as they readjusted to the gleam of sunlight lancing sporadically through the clouds and spores. Those small eyes turned to regard her, and she saw an intelligence there, a sentience that made an estimation and evaluation of her, as though it was considering whether she was presenting herself as a meal to sate its ravenous appetite. Still actively sensing the feelings of the creature before her, Tama could practically hear its stomach growl in accordance with her own, and that sound was only followed by one produced by its throat, a threat display meant to cow her into submission, to freeze her in her fear and thus present easy prey.

The rancor's widely splayed feet thundered through the fungal underbrush, crushing and toppling mushrooms, and its arms reached out to either side and just ahead of it, its digits opening wide to grasp her in its claws. Tama continued to back up, the fear raging through her screaming at her to run, to make her weak and wobbling legs churn as fast as they were able, to run across the city and not look back, lest she slow enough for the rancor to catch up to her.

But Tama forced herself to slow, then stop, standing straight as the ponderous gait of the rancor brought the creature towering over her, swallowing her with its shadow. She quieted the fears within her, forcing them and all other emotions from her mind as she continued to reach beyond herself, to extend appendages of thought and sensation to the primitive but powerful mind of the monstrosity standing before her. Once again emptied of emotions, she could clearly feel the naked energies of the Force coursing through her and around her, as well as the Force within the rancor itself. With the Force so filling her, the rancor no longer seemed quite so frightening, despite its sheer size and fearsome appearance. It was merely another beacon of Force energy, a life signature feeding the Force while simultaneously relying upon it for its very existence, whether it realized this or not.

Tama found it a simple thing to reach out to the rancor's mind, to expand her consciousness to include not only her own existence, but that of the rancor's as well. The creature paused in its forward advance, its desires to consume her outright halted by curiosity, and a modicum of fear of its own, as it too sensed the alien contact of her mind. Tama was not experienced with such telepathic and empathic communication, and she could already feel her exhausted body quivering as the effort required to draw upon the Force in such a way began to drain her. But for now, she was truly beyond physical concerns, having touched upon the Force to a degree she had never before experienced. She drew upon the memories affecting the mind and instincts of the boma, though she found the rancor's thoughts to be more sophisticated than that of the previous predator's. The boma had been a mere animal, an organism of instinct, hunger, and the drive to satisfy the most basic of survival needs. In contrast, the rancor had some level of sapient intelligence, actually _wanting_ things beyond that which would ensure its continued survival. It _wanted_ to hunt, as its family members had, as the ancestors that had come before it had. It _wanted_ to find shelter, comfort, and belonging, missing the security and kinship it had felt when in the company of others of its kind. But most of all, it _wanted_ to escape, to flee from the invisible walls which fenced it into this graveyard of metal and stone.

As Tama discovered this desire on the rancor's part, she reached out to it, targeting it specifically with a wave of empathy, assuring the creature that she wanted the same thing. She gritted her teeth as she rooted deeper into the rancor's thoughts and feelings, surprised at how complex the monstrosity actually was, almost on the same level of intelligent thought as a child's might be. And so it had little difficulty understanding her attempts at promoting a kinship between them, her unspoken desires for alliance against the being who had wronged both of them. And yet, it also understood that her mental intrusions did not belong, that she was not meant to be in its mind, that she was an interloper to its thoughts and sensations. Tama pushed harder, digging deeper, her hand rising into the air before her face of its own volition, a tactile attempt to focus her mental efforts. Sweat ran down the lengths of her _lekku_ and the small of her back, and she could feel the rancor's hot, rancid breath wafting about her face as it leaned close with a threatening growl, a growl that peeled off into a breathy exhalation as her mind burrowed into its own. The rancor's claws dug deep into the mud in a final show of defiance, those claws perilously close to either side of Tama, threatening to sweep her from her feet.

But as magnificent and terrifying as the beast was, it was ultimately no match for the Force, nor for one sensitive to its unlimited power, even one with as little training in its mysteries as she.

Tama opened her eyes when she felt a profound and deep connection between herself and the rancor, an understanding that was as much spiritual as it was mental or physical. For several long moments, she could see through the rancor's eyes, could feel its own bodily processes as raw meat and fungal matter worked their way through its digestive tract, smelled its rancid breath as if it was exuded from her own lungs. She had a moment of vertigo when she gazed through the creature's eyes and saw herself standing there, a Twi'lek girl reduced to little more than rags hanging off a frame of grimy skin stretched taut over a brittle skeleton, one hand raised as though in a placating gesture, her eyes still closed. As the bond between Twi'lek and rancor solidified and the Force flowed more easily between the two of them, she experienced difficulty determining where she began and the rancor ended, whether there were even two distinct beings anymore, or if they had merged into a single presence within the Force.

Then Tama let herself release her mental grip on the connection, for it was a construct of the Force now, and existed outside both herself and her new companion, allowing them to sense each others thoughts, feelings, and emotions. They shared a common purpose now, no longer viewing each other as enemies or predator and prey, but as equals, allies with shared goals. Tentatively, Tama's upraised hand stretched further toward the rancor, and sensing its intent, the creature lowered its head until its face loomed in front of her own, its hot breath contributing to the feeling of grime on her skin. Her fingers touched the rough, wrinkled surface of its snout, and it was surprisingly dry and warm. The rancor made a slight, thrumming sound in the back of its throat as it derived pleasure from the contact. For too long, it had gone without companionship, and though its mind continued to occasionally rebel against her thoughts imposed upon its own, it seemed genuinely elated for the sense of belonging she had given it.

 _Him_ , she reminded herself as she peered into its mind again. This rancor was a male, as aware of her sex as she was of its own, looking upon her as one might a younger sister, to be guarded and protected. The rancor brought up one of its claws, the forefinger coming up to gently tap Tama on the shoulder, and through the emotional connection they shared, she understood it to be a gesture of affection. Tama tried not to be knocked off her feet by the motion, continuing to stroke the leathery flesh of the rancor's face, while exerting her telepathic influence over him, showing him images of the bunker containing the shield generators, making him understand that this large, squared boulder with light sitting atop it was the reason for their mutual imprisonment, and the means by which they might escape. The rancor understood, and gave a low growl of determination.

Tama was so exhausted from the day's events and her battle of wills with the rancor, but she somehow maintained her footing and ceased her stroking of the rancor's snout, merely keeping her hand upon his hide and feeling the warmth exuding from within. She reinforced the image she had represented with a reaffirmation of its location, its strengths, and the defenses about it. There was a moment of hesitation, indecisiveness, as she tried to make her companion realize that where she bid him to go would be dangerous, perhaps deadly.

The rancor understood, but he was not afraid. Despite his semi-sentience, he too understood the concept that those things worth achieving were similarly worth fighting for. And though prey had been plentiful in this prison of strange lights and eerie hums, the rancor desired freedom to roam the jungles of his birth once more, to taste freedom again. It was a commonality shared by both of them, and they drew strength in each other's resolve to find that freedom again, to fight for it if they must.

Tama looked up into the rancor's searching gaze, and allowed herself a small grin. "How about we get out of this place, and eat anything that dares to stand in our way?"

The rancor gave an appreciative growl in response, and the resolve they shared strengthened them both.

* * *

While Tama had been absent, hopefully having success with recruiting a rancor to their endeavor of escape, as insane as that sounded, Nuri and the other children had busied themselves with preparing for the most opportune moment to strike back against the forces commanded by their captor. Nuri, being experienced with blasters and fighting for her life when necessary already, had taken it upon herself to make certain the other children were at least marginally familiar with the weapons they had procured, and that they could successfully use them without injuring themselves in the process. From all that she had seen so far, Fenn seemed to have the most practice, or talent with blasters of the group, while Farr was too excitable to aim properly, and Otar and Cyran had never held an energy weapon in their lives, though they assured her they were eager to learn.

What followed was about an hour of haphazard target practice and frantic relocation as the shots of their spent lasers echoed through the ruins and joined the cacophony of nighttime noises and the screeches of ravenous predators. Nuri would indicate some bit of refuse or ruined structure she wished for her "charges" to hit, then would check their stances and how they chose to brace themselves in preparation for the recoil unique to each weapon. When she was satisfied, she would order them to fire a volley, inspect the blast points to determine accuracy, then urge them all to move to a different area within the labyrinthine streets and alleys, so that they never stayed long in the location they had just announced with the blasterfire. During this entire session, they neither heard nor saw any signs of the Savior's droids searching for them, and none of the creatures hunting through the mud and mold came close enough to present any true threat. Nuri was loathe to spend their time in such dangerous and potentially suicidal activities, but if Tama was able to enlist a rancor or something equally as powerful to take down the shield generators, both she and their "ally" would need as much cover and distraction as could be provided. With how many droids were in that courtyard, arrayed around the bunker, she doubted even a fearsome rancor could withstand the fusillade of laserfire the droids could bring to bear. Which meant their numbers had to be thinned and assaulted from all sides, but not before Tama and whatever beast she controlled through the Force could devote its full attention to the bunker; otherwise, more droids would arrive to reinforce and replace those already destroyed, and there would be a firefight the children could not win, even with the element of surprise.

And so she gave her newfound allies a crash course in blaster weaponry, and continued their haphazard target practice until she was satisfied that they could all at least get close to hitting something at medium range. Ultimately, Nuri had to call the training session to a halt because of how much time had already been spent on it, as well as their dwindling supplies of ammunition. They would need every blaster bolt they could bring to bear.

The children then set about winding their way back through the twisted passages that formed the alleys and streets around the courtyard, and with some guidance and scouting on Nuri and Fenn's parts, they found shadows from which they could lurk to espy the courtyard beyond. There were even more droids surrounding the bunker now, never straying farther than the expanse's perimeters, and apparently as alert as barely functioning, nearly twenty year old machines of low intelligence and preprogrammed violence could be. Nuri and Fenn remained in the shadows, sticking to bits of rubble and spots of cover as they examined the patterns of their enemies, and the fortifications around the bunker, which were little more than the thick durasteel walls of the building and its hardy blast doors. It would be simple to outflank the droids and catch many of them in a crossfire, as none of them bothered to actually sweep the alleys that presented numerous points of access to the courtyard. Nuri just wished there were far more of the prisoners to fight. She wished her father were here; he would have been able to turn the odds that were so heavily stacked against them to work in their favor.

The following hours were occupied by each of the children slinking through the alleys and darkened, shelled buildings, always keeping the courtyard within their sights, until they reached vantage points from which they would have great advantage in firing upon the droids. Had they been a battalion of battle-hardened stormtroopers, now would be the perfect time for a surprise assault, where each member would only have to focus on one or two targets and trust their squadmates would handle the rest.

Nuri's instructions had been less precise; this was no military, and she was no commander. "Just pick your targets, aim as carefully as you can, and fire simultaneously, so the enemy can't focus on a single location and cut us all down one by one. Destroy and weaken as many of the droids as you can; Tama will need all the help we can give her."

"And if Tama no come?" came Farr's question, the Rodian voicing the unspoken doubts they all shared.

Nuri had bit her lower lip and said with far more confidence than she actually felt, "She won't let us down."

Now Nuri found herself alone, leaning against a wall covered in a thin film of mold, mere centimeters from a ground story level window, its opening cleared completely of transparisteel, with only bits of the transparent material scattered across the floor of the dark room she inhabited, having been ground into glittering dust by time and its erosive effects. She had drawn her aching knees up to her chest and propped the A280 Blaster Rifle against her shins, her hands occasionally rubbing the smoothed metal of the barrel in nervous anticipation. Infrequently, she would crane her neck to the left to gaze through the opening of the window and the courtyard beyond, watching the circuits taken by the droids, listening to the occasional garbled and static-laden conversations they would carry on. Her eyes always sought past them in the darkness, past the glowing strands of light emitting from the roof of the bunker, to various other windows, doorways, and alleyways where she knew the other prisoners were to be hiding. So far, she had seen no sign of her compatriots, which she took as a good sign, for if she was able to spot them amongst the ruins, they were far enough out of their spots of cover and hiding places for the droids to catch sight of them as well. This ambush would all be for naught if they were flushed out of hiding early.

And so she was forced to wait. Wait and hope that Tama would be able to uphold the most critical part of the plan, the part that was the least likely to succeed. Had the Zabrak not seen with her own eyes some of the things that Tama was capable of, through this so-called "Force" of hers, Nuri would have shot the plan down immediately. Even now, she found herself questioning whether the starvation, exhaustion, and trauma had irrevocably crippled her mind, to have agreed to and even supported such a course of action. More than likely, as she sat here with false hope blossoming in her chest, Tama was even now being digested by that rancor, and her and the others would follow soon after. The Zabrak had to squeeze her eyes shut in denial against that hovertrain of thought and the haunting phantasms it conjured in her mind. Instead, attempting to remain calm before the coming flurry of activity and violence sure to occur, Nuri tried to clear her mind completely of all thought and emotion, to be at peace as much as possible.

Her attempts at inner serenity must have been successful, for moments later, Nuri felt herself snapping back awake, nearly dropping her blaster in the process. She let out a great exhale of frustration and wakefulness, blinking rapidly. Now was not the time for sleep, no matter how much she truly needed it.

The Zabrak shifted slightly, trying to make herself more comfortable, mentally chiding herself for dozing off and wondering what had awoken her from her temporary slumber. It was then that she realized that the voices of the droids had become more frequent and animated, babbling to each other and repeating their favored phrase of "roger, roger" as they seemed to be preparing for some new development. Careful not to reveal too much of herself and thus compromise her position, Nuri gazed out the window, to see the droids hurrying to the far side of the courtyard, brandishing and readying weapons. If she recalled correctly, Cyran was ensconced in a window well on that side, and for an agonizing moment, Nuri believed the Duros had been discovered by their enemies.

But then she felt the vibrations shiver through the ground beneath her feet and posterior, and she felt a mixture of both elation and fear. Her eyes peered through the darkness and shadows cast by the ray shield generators' lights, past the hustling droid carapaces, to gaze down one of the largest passages and access points to the courtyard, what had once been a street, the end of which was mostly blocked by a half-demolished gossamer glider. Looming over the crumpled wings and crushed cockpit of the vessel was a hulking shadow that, despite its size, was pounding down the street on its stumpy but powerful legs, its lengthy arms alternating between vicious swings and supportive pushes off the cracked permacrete with its thick knuckles. Flashes of phosphorescent patterns outlined its features, while a shrieking roar that produced soundwaves violent enough to rattle her teeth and horns in her sockets.

Nuri let a feral grin curve her mouth; either Tama had succeeded in her part of the plan, or their luck had just taken a turn for the better. The droids were most definitely distracted now as they perceived almost two thousand kilograms of primal fury and raw destructive force bearing down on them, and despite their poor heuristic processing abilities, they could easily perceive the threat, and predictably opened fire on it.

As the screaming onslaught of red hyphens of laserfire slammed into the approaching rancor to little effect, Nuri shouldered her blaster rifle and propped it on the bottom edge of the window, looking through the scope affixed to the dorsal rail. She had barely brought her finger to the trigger before the retorts of energy weapons from sources beyond the droids' blasters echoed through the courtyard, and spears of sanguine energy erupted from multiple windows, doorways, and alleys, some of them passing over the battle droids' heads uselessly, while others sliced into their ranks like a vibroblade through flesh. Nuri grinned as her compatriots began their assault, sowing more confusion than inflicting true harm, though both served their purposes of distraction and division equally well. The Zabrak depressed her weapon's trigger, sighting along the scope as a battle droid, turning about wildly as it tried to ascertain all the directions it was being assaulted from, stumbled into view. A single shot from her rifle brought it down, and she immediately selected another target, a B2 keeping withering fire from its wrist blaster concentrated on the approaching rancor. As though it were second nature, she flipped the gun's fire selector to autofire and unleashed a spattering of bolts that burrowed deep, angry ulcers of molten duranium in the Super Battle Droid's armor, and the automata fell, its wrist blaster still spewing sporadically into the air.

The group of droids that had clustered before the street and the ruined glider were now trying to spread out, the limited tactics subroutines in their artificial brains bidding them to put distance between their fellows so that single attacks could not affect so many at once. But their reactions were too slow, for the rancor had mounted the wreckage of the glider and came down upon the group of droids, its lengthy, armored limbs sweeping through their midst. For the second time that day, Nuri witnessed the raw power and fury of a rancor, the primal rage that made the species an object of fear and terror all across the galaxy. Battle Droids cartwheeled through the air, trailing broken servomotors, joints, and splashes of lubricants, to either hit the ground hard enough to crumple into twisted heaps of broken, twitching parts, or slamming into the walls of buildings with shrieks of metal and explosions of sparks. One unfortunate battle droid tumbled head over heels through the open doorway of an old florist's shop, its wail of "Why me?!" ending in an abrupt _clang_ of metal. The rancor roared in alternating shrieks of fury and triumph as droids crumpled and were reduced to slag at its claws, though some of those vociferations were punctuated by gasps of pain, great rushes of air from its enormous lungs as the sustained fire of some of those blasts punctured deep into its hide.

Then blasterfire from yet another source rang out, and Nuri's eyes were drawn to a small, thin figure emerging from the shadows and swirls of disturbed spores, a figure heaving a snubbed blaster rifle and taking careful shots that cut out the legs or chewed through the spindly waists of battle droids and super battle droids alike. Nuri wanted to scream with joy; Tama was still alive, and judging by the proximity in which she remained, just slightly beside and behind the rampaging rancor, her portion of her proposed plan had been successful.

Despite the large number of droids and the inexperienced "soldiers" arrayed against them, their tormentor's metallic minions stood little chance against the combined efforts of the children and the fury of the rancor, bonded in mind and soul with the Force-sensitive Twi'lek. Within moments, the three dozen or so droids had been reduced to a third of that number by the rancor alone as it charged directly through their lines, further depleted by the wild, suppressing fire of the lasers from all the rebellious prisoners flanking the perimeters of the courtyard. Indeed, the rancor could have dealt with the rest of the droids by itself, but Nuri saw Tama jog to its side, her hand reaching out tentatively to brush the creature's leg with the briefest of contact. Whatever passed between them was invisible to Nuri, but it did not go unnoticed by the rancor, for the focus of its assault changed as its large, unwieldy head rose to fix its eyes upon the bunker in the middle of the courtyard. The rancor tossed its head back in a roar that seemed to warp the atmosphere itself, then lowered its head and began loping across the courtyard, crushing anything, droid and mushroom alike, that happened to be in its way. Tama followed in the creature's wake, as though she needed to be as close to the rancor as possible to continue compelling it to the prisoners' benefit, her E-5 Blaster Rifle rising intermittently to put a bolt or two through a nearby droid. Nuri let the others around the courtyard continue to pour fire into the remaining battle droids and focused on covering Tama as she and her immense companion sprinted across the intervening space.

When the rancor collided with the bunker, the shock sent through the ground was enough to nearly knock the Zabrak onto her posterior, and the shriek of pain and frustration elicited from the rancor was so loud, Nuri was certain her ears were bleeding as a result. She peered through the window again to see that the rancor was actively hammering on the exterior of the bunker, its claws scrabbling over durasteel supports and permacrete walls, the metal denting and crumpling beneath its anger, the stone crumbling and cracking, both having been weakened by the years and the pervasive intrusions of Felucia's hardy and persistent flora. However, the assault was proving ineffectual, for not even the strength of a rancor was enough to immediately crush a structure meant to withstand turbolasers and explosive charges. Two Super Battle Droids, staggering on their malfunctioning feet, turned their lasers upon the rancor, blaster bolts hammering into the side of its neck and head and provoking another scream from the creature. Nuri turned her attention from the rancor and unloaded a storm of blaster bolts into the pair of B2s, their backs facing her and therefore easy and susceptible targets. They went down in smoldering heaps.

The rancor, at Tama's invisible urging, returned to its assault upon the bunker, putting great scars in the metal and ripping chunks from the mold-weakened permacrete, but at the rate it was trying to crack the shell of the bunker, the creature would likely wear itself out long before it was able to get at any of the delicate electronics and shield generators hidden within. Droids continued to drop all around the courtyard, as the prisoners Nuri had attempted to train finally became more accurate, or lucky, with their weapons and commenced destroying the remaining battle droids with well-placed blaster bolts. For now, the courtyard was practically theirs, and the desperate and insane plan they had used to do so had somehow, against all odds, worked.

But the battle had been incredibly loud and had undoubtedly attracted attention. If more droids, predators, and who knew what else was at their captor's disposal were anywhere nearby, they would be converging on their position as soon as possible. Which meant they were already out of time, and their living "bunker buster" was no closer to disabling the ray shields for them.

Nuri rose in the window, then shouted across the space and over the sound of continuing blasterfire and growls of frustration from the rancor, directing her vociferation at Tama, who remained in the rancor's shadow. "Tama! Hurry! Have it hit the emitters on top!"

Due to the din, there was no way that Tama could have heard articulate speech coming from the Zabrak. And yet, she seemed to understand exactly what Nuri had yelled in her direction, and she looked up to the rancor again. A strained look of concentration came to the Twi'lek's grimy face, and the rancor redoubled its efforts, though now its great, sweeping claws no longer dug furrows in the sides of the bunker, but reached up and sank its hands into the streams of energy twisting upward to form the ray shields. It shrieked in pain as the raw strands of energy burned its armored flesh, but those digits kneaded, gripped, and pulled, and with a shower of sparks and a flash of light and smoke, the rancor gave a howl as it ripped the emitters free of their housing. The barely perceptible hum of the ray shields above them ceased suddenly, replaced by a dull, droning whine as the dome of energy high above them began to dissipate, the shields falling away into oblivion, receding from the air like water being drawn from a beach by the tide.

The other prisoners were beginning to emerge from their hiding places, shouting and cheering as the shields disappeared and the last of the droids fell twitching to the mud. But their sounds of celebration were drowned out by the anguished and angry screams of the rancor, flinging its burned and singed claws to either side as it roared to the night sky, as if denying the entire galaxy. Nuri's grin of triumph immediately became a grimace of concern as she focused on Tama, who suddenly seemed very small compared to the rancor, and was actively putting as much distance between her and the predator as possible on her hobbling, limping sprint. Nuri vaulted through the broken window and began to sprint toward her, glancing between the rancor that was obviously in pain and her friend and companion, who was angling for the nearest alleyway. The other children, who were scattered about the courtyard in accordance with the cover they had just left, now showed fear in their eyes as they saw the rancor continuing to shriek in pain, then dropping into a hunched position, cradling its injured hands to its chest as its dark, tiny gaze swept the courtyard, malice indicative of an intelligence beyond that of a simple animal gleaming in its eyes. They assumed the rancor was no longer on their side, and scattered back to their hiding places and the alleyways that would take them through, and presumably, out of the city.

Nuri caught up to the fleeing Tama as she turned a corner into a cramped and dark alley, the ground choked with clumps of mushrooms, some of which effused clouds of spores as their churning feet tore through them. Nuri could hear the low, deadly growl of the rancor as it turned to pursue, could feel a fetid rush of air at her back as a mere stride from the monster put the creature on her heels. Nuri dove through the opening and followed Tama, feeling the buildings hemming them in shake as the rancor attempted to wedge a reaching arm through the alley to snatch at the girls. One of those claws, still smoldering, passed within centimeters of the back of Nuri's head, before she caught up to the fleeing Twi'lek, and together, the two of them tumbled around the first corner the alley took and out of the rancor's reach. They scrabbled away from that corner as the edifices continued to shake, then the rancor's frustrated scream echoed through the confined space, deafening both of them.

Nuri pushed off the slimy ground at her feet, then reached down and helped Tama to her feet. The Twi'lek girl looked as though a slight breeze would knock her flat, she was so unsteady on her feet. So Nuri offered her shoulder, and the Twi'lek gladly took it, leaning heavily upon her, though Nuri was quite capable of supporting her slim form, even in her own weakened state. The Zabrak squeezed her shoulder, then asked in a hoarse voice, "Are you okay?"

"Stellar", Tama gasped, her lips quivering as she did so. "We...we need to find the others...then g-get moving. He...might have backup generators, or more ray shields. This might be our only chance...at escape."

Nuri grimaced as Tama tried to hobble away. "We need rest, Tama. _You_ need rest. On Spira. For years."

Tama gave a dry laugh, her hobbling continuing and reluctantly dragging Nuri, her support, along. "There's no time. We need to get out of here, before more droids, or acklay, or bomas, or that rancor hunt us all down. The others...find them...then we escape into the jungle, where it won't be easy for him to find us."

"What happened with that rancor, anyway? You had it helping us, but now it wants to eat us again?"

Tama nodded, the pain on her face originating from more than her physical condition. "I...lost him. I lost control of him when I...asked him to attack the emitters...he burned himself, and the _pain_..." Tama shook her head, as though she were trying to dislodge the agonizing memories that she was currently experiencing. Nuri noticed her hands were quivering uncontrollably, instinctively tucking them to her chest in an eerie mimicry of the rancor's own motions. "He felt that I had betrayed him...and now he wants to eat me, and all I care about. Rancors are a lot smarter than they look...They hold grudges..."

Nuri grunted as the rancor roared again, the call coming from a greater distance than it had been before, which meant it was no longer crouched at the entrance to their alley. Even so, she had no intention of returning the way they had come, but would rather make their way through the maze of alleys and streets surrounding the courtyard, to find their way into the city proper and reunite with their comrades. She gently guided Tama along as they headed deeper into the labyrinth, attempting some levity as they shuffled forward. "Can't be that smart if he wants to eat us. We're so scrawny, we'd probably just get caught between his teeth."

They had barely made it a meter in their shambling advance, Tama just opening her mouth to respond to the Zabrak's jest, when they were immediately brought to their knees by an unexpected supernova of pain that lanced through their skulls. It was so intense, Nuri was unaware of anything but the pain, not even feeling the scrapes she got on her palms and knees as she toppled to the jagged permacrete, dropping Tama in the process. She was screaming, but she could not hear her own voice over the sound of the psychic scream that ripped through her skull, like a blaster bolt that had entered at the top of her brainstem and continued to bounce around within her cranium's confines, melting and setting afire all the matter of her brain. The scream was not true sound, and it was more than the voice of their captor in her mind; it was pure rage, hatred, and agony all twisted into a mental onslaught that threatened to end her very existence with its power and unbridled strength. The shriek seemed to last for eternity, but it was gone as soon as it had arrived, leaving only a feeling of emptiness, a chill that radiated throughout her body, mind, and soul, as though all that she was had been scoured clean and lifeless by that horrible burst of agony.

Nuri did not know how long she lay there, the world swimming in and out of focus, unable to string together any coherent thoughts. She finally began to return to awareness when she felt Tama shaking her shoulders, so forcibly that her head was bouncing up and down and tapping the ground beneath the back of it. The pain shooting through one of her vestigial horns as it struck the permacrete repeatedly was what helped her refocus and collect herself. She opened her mouth to say something, then felt her stomach rebel, and she turned to the side just in time to retch multiple times, though little more than saliva and flecks of bile emerged from her esophagus.

Finally, the retching ended, and Nuri found she could sit up again, albeit unsteadily, and it was still difficult to think straight. She met Tama's concerned and pained gaze, and could feel the girl's hands on both of her cheeks, keeping her head upright; Nuri felt certain that her head would loll about loosely on her neck if the Twi'lek had not supported it. She saw her mouth moving, but it was several moments of horrifying, ringing silence before she could actually hear what she was saying. "Nuri!" she was shouting. "Nuri! Come back to me! We have to get out of here!"

Nuri nodded dumbly, and together, the two girls struggled back to their feet, supporting each other equally. The world continued to swim in and out of focus, and Nuri could only pick up on the occasional ragged gasp from either herself or Tama beside her within the din of ringing that continued to plague here ears. She wondered now if her ears were truly bleeding, but was too frightened and disoriented to make certain. "What...wh-what the blinking ferglutz was _that_?"

Tama seemed reluctant to answer; no, she was _afraid_ to. "That was... _him_. The bastard who kidnapped us...and it's become even more imperative that we leave this place...this whole planet, if we can manage it."

Nuri gave her a puzzled look, attempting to ask the question on her mind, but finding that her tongue failed her. Tama understood anyway, gasping as she stated, "I think...I think I know what he is now. And if I'm right, we're in more danger than any of us realized, and we need...to get as far away as _fast_ as we possibly can."


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Foyi kept a tight grip on the discblade encircling her right fist, even as her free hand snaked to her back, fumbling with the stocks of the disruptor rifle and the A295 Blaster Rifle strapped there, wondering if either one of the weapons would have meaningful effect upon a rancor and its Force-sensitive rider. She gave Rayf a furtive glance, who was wiping beads of water dripping into his eyes from his hair, his hands kept loose upon his reassembled wan-shen, turning the weapon over in his palms. Foyi met his eyes in the darkness, then gestured with a flick of her _tchin_ at the VES-700 Pulse Rifle strapped across his back, though he shook his head. He spoke no words, though his meaning was clear enough; he did not want to use such a volatile weapon in such a confined space unless it was a life and death situation.

 _Which it might be in the next few moments_ , Foyi thought as her attention returned to the rancor decorated with war paint and ridden by an alien steeped in the Dark Side. The rancor had picked up its pace now, its rider giving encouraging hoots and gesturing with the prominent arm on its right side, the pseudopod-equipped hand affixed to a sharp, jagged length of bone that looked vaguely like some kind of crude blade. She did not dare reach out to the Force-sensitive rider, lest she inadvertently alert him to their exact location, though it was beginning to appear more likely that he and his mount were aware of them, no matter how well they had hidden.

Foyi looked down at her discblade, then back up to the approaching monstrosity, gauging the distance and power, both physical and mental, she would have to summon for a devastating throw. From all she had heard and read regarding rancors, it was unlikely even a Force-imbued spinning disc would be effective against its armored hide. Perhaps she should aim for the rider, and maybe grant them enough of a distraction to retreat out of the rancor's range of smell and sensation. The Twi'lek rose slightly from the tangle of fungi, cocking her arm back for a throw, but found herself interrupted when Rayf reached over and shoved her back to the mud, forcing her back into a low crouch. A spike of irritation nearly gave her Force presence away as she whirled on Rayf, who was shaking his head, concerned still with maintaining their cover. Attempting to let the rancor and Felucian pass them by unmolested.

The thunder of the rancor's footfalls slowed as its rider gave a short bark, and the creature came to a stop, barely two meters away, standing still under the swaying and glowing fronds and stalks. The rancor sniffed deeply of the air, a low growl escaping its throat. A similar nasal sound came from the rider atop it, as though the Felucian was attempting to pick up their scent as well. Neither Foyi nor Rayf dared to breathe, much less move, as the rancor slowly plodded back and forth, trampling the mud and the smaller mushrooms at its enormous feet. It passed within decimeters of their position multiple times within the next few moments, the Felucian and rancor both turning their heads in eerie tandem as they tested the air for unfamiliar scents. Foyi could feel the alien's consciousness riding the currents of the Force around them; she could feel its presence sliding just past hers, as though she were a frightened gnooroop hovering near the ocean's surface as a predatory demonsquid passed in the depths below. But the circumstances of both hers and Rayf's lives had necessitated they both be well-versed in Force-augmented stealth, and so the native's consciousness moved passed them without acknowledgment. The alien made a clicking noise that rose into an undulating hoot, and the rancor began to lumber off, heading deeper into the jungle, but cutting a course through the foliage that remained parallel to the edges of the battlefield.

Foyi let out the breath she had been holding, and reached a hand over to Rayf, drawing strength from the tactile contact of her palm against his shoulder. She was feeling weak again, and despite her training, the harrowing experiences she had faced and overcome, she had felt fear throughout her entire being for moments that had felt like an eternity. The Dark Side's effects upon this world were insidious, and it was already eating away at her emotional control and her mental solidarity, which served to continue sapping at her tenuous strength and the alacrity of her healing body. She looked past Rayf and watched as the rancor continued to plod away from them, dropping upon its claws and knuckles as it strode through the jungle, still growling and chuffing, the alien astride it bobbing up and down with the motions of its immense shoulders. The pair seemed to be looking for something, though she knew not what; hopefully, they were the only such team of Force-sensitive and beast that they would encounter as they continued searching for Tama.

Rayf turned to her, perhaps to indicate a new direction in the opposite direction of the rancor and Felucian, or maybe to say something comforting or snarky. Whatever his chosen action, it was interrupted by a lance of brilliant crimson light that briefly lit the immediate area as it streaked through the forest from an elevated position unseen in the darkness, then bisected the Felucian and rancor's path. The blaster bolt sliced through the alien's torso and emerged from his right shoulder blade before dissipating amongst the foliage, sending the alien spinning and flailing off the back of the rancor and crumpling in the darkness and underbrush. The rancor gave a surprised growl as the weight upon its shoulders was suddenly lifted, and was just turning about when a succession of shots screamed across the night again, burning through fungal protrusions before impacting the rancor in a tight cluster about its neck and the left side of its head, eliciting splashes of thick blood and glinting phosphorescent paint. The rancor gave a keening whine as it nearly collapsed, bleeding profusely from the five shots that had struck its neck and face, but remained upright, balancing upon its right leg and arm as it attempted to catch its breath. The rancor gave a wet, gurgling growl as it pushed against the ground and struggled back to is feet, but the noises of defiance and suffering that permeated the jungles were not enough to mask the sound of a shrill whistle through the mushrooms. Had Foyi not possessed such keen eyesight in low light, she would not have seen the flash of metal, like an insect moving at supersonic speeds that emerged from the same direction as the blaster bolts, impacting within the wounds suffered by the rancor. The rancor gave another shriek as the projectile burrowed into its ruined flesh, then the monstrosity began to flail and jerk, as though suffering and losing some internal battle with its own musculature. With a throaty, choking gasp, it collapsed in the brush and thrashed weakly, its body entering convulsions that became less severe as the moments dragged on.

Foyi and Rayf waited in the darkness, straining to listen to the silence that slowly gave way to the expected cacophony of night activity from the Felucian fauna. The rancor did not move save for an intermittent twitch; the only sounds it made were light groans and strained, gargled breathing. Foyi narrowed her eyes, attempting to gain a better vantage on the invisible sniper somewhere in the jungle ahead of them, not daring to reach out in the Force to help her search, lest she attract the attention of other Darksiders she was unable to sense in the miasma of entropic energies suffusing the planet. She gave Rayf a quizzical glance, and he merely shrugged, still clutching tightly to the haft of his wan-shen, the pale skin of his knuckles being the only indication of the stress he was feeling.

Foyi began to stand, then stopped halfway through the motion when an icy splash of danger sense skittered over her mind. She glanced down at her chest, and upon the damp tunic and jacket danced a skittering dot of light. She felt her breath hitch and her blood run cold as she realized the dot was projected by a spot-luma, a targeting laser that hovered in a silent, lethal threat over her heart. Rayf saw it at almost the same moment she did, and made a move toward her, perhaps in an attempt to push her out of the field of fire, but the dot switched to hover over his own heart, then back to hers, then his, in a matter of mere seconds. And as both of them froze, imagining what it must be like to have a high-powered blaster bolt sear through their chests, a silent voice arose in their minds in a cold, demanding tone. _Unless both of you think you can survive fist-sized holes through your hearts, I would remain as still as the corpses you may yet become. If you wait for a moment, we can have a proper conversation, at which point I'll decide whether you're more useful to me dead or alive._

The voice did not answer for an agonizingly lengthy moment, and Rayf replied audibly, in a tone that was characteristically positive. "We'll be here."

There was no reply, and the spot-luma wavered, sometimes up and down, other times back and forth, occasionally disappearing off Foyi's chest, only to reappear on Rayf's, and vice versa. Foyi and Rayf stood still, not daring to move, keeping their breathing shallow, but their bodies tense and ready for an attack. Foyi kept a grip on her discblade, her eyes roving the darkness and fungi ahead, searching for a target she might throw the weapon of the Zeison Sha at in a lethal arc. Cautiously, she opened her mind to the Force, barely stretching her sensations beyond her body, but feeling nothing specific, save for the confusing waves of the Dark Side that permeated almost every surface, object, and creature on this planet.

Despite both Foyi and Rayf's acute awareness and Force senses, the person who had spoken to them through telepathy alone approached unheard, a figure suddenly stepping out from behind the wide bole of a enormous mushroom, the figure's dark garments melding almost seamlessly with the shadows cast by the mushroom's canopy. The figure continued to creep forward with quick, measured movements, striding like a predator and making barely a whisper of sound. The figure was humanoid and female, judging by the effeminate grace and curves of her body. Her lithe form was clothed in a garment of blackest night that hugged her features, a shadowsuit that blended in so well with the darkness beneath the fungal canopy and the black ceiling of the night sky, and yet was elastic enough to allow a full range of movement. Shrouding her shoulders was a sort of half-cloak made of the same black shadowsilk, the hood of the garment pulled up over her head, keeping her face hidden in shadows. Strapped to her waist was an utility belt laden with pouches and equipment, and upon her wrists were vambraces that had been modified to include several miniaturized tools and weapons. At one hip was a holster containing a C-10 Dragoneye Reaper Heavy Blaster Pistol, and strapped to her back was a pack filled with unknown materials, slung beside an Accelerated Charged Particle Array Gun. In her hands, balanced against her shoulder and swinging quickly between Rayf and Foyi's chests was an E-11s Sniper Blaster Rifle, the weapon emitting the spot-luma that foretold impending blaster bolts through their vitals should they make any move deemed hostile.

The woman remained in the shadows, though she crept close enough to the edge of them that she, and the weapon she had trained on the human and Twi'lek companions, could be seen clearly. She gestured at both of them in turn with the barrel of her sniper rifle, and reluctantly, Foyi and Rayf dropped their bladed weapons in the mud and mold at their feet. Rayf straightened, his hands held far from his sides, and gave the hooded woman a crooked grin. "That was some stellar shooting back there, sweetheart. Not many people can take down a rancor with so few blaster shots."

The hooded sniper's only reaction to the compliment was to train her weapon specifically upon Rayf. She spoke verbally this time, though the cold, detached tone of voice was the same as the telepathic message they had received moments before. "The rancor and its Felucian rider have been hunting me for the last three kilometers, but I could never get a decent vantage point on them until you distracted them with your-" she sniffed deeply before continuing, "- _unique_ smells. Count it as my way of showing gratitude that I didn't blast you guys immediately after taking down the rancor."

"Yeah, you're a real hero," Foyi replied sourly.

The sniper rifle's barrel shifted so that the Twi'lek was staring down its dark tunnel of death. "Who are the two of you? Who do you work for? What are you doing here?"

"We could ask the same questions of you,"Rayf replied cryptically.

"You could," the woman responded as her aim shifted to Rayf's face. "And I'm willing to answer those questions, as long as I like your answers. Which you will give me first. Give me a reason not to cut the both of you down now."

Foyi waited until the sniper's aim had swung over to her companion before suddenly jabbing her open, empty palm forward, while lashing out toward the woman with a wave of the Force. Foyi was nearly startled from the concentration she kept upon her telepathic pull when she saw the woman beginning to dodge to the side, her rifle sweeping to point at Foyi, but she was a second too slow, for the rifle was ripped from her grasp, whereupon it spun through the air, cartwheeling end over end to slap into Foyi's waiting hands. Simultaneously, the woman continued to dive to the side, fouling Foyi's initial aim as her hand flashed to her hip, reaching for the C-10 Heavy Blaster Pistol. But Rayf was not simply standing by either, for the Force surged within him as his motions blurred; the toe of his boot hooked under the hilt of his wan-shen, kicking it up over a meter into the air, where he caught it midspin and immediately jabbed it forward like a spear. The flat of the blade caught the sniper's gloved hand as she had drawn her heavy blaster pistol halfway from its sheathe, and a lightning-fast twist of the wan-shen dislodged her fingers from around the weapon, sending it spinning from its holster and into the darkness. All of this occurred before the sniper had even hit the ground, but she did now, striking the mud with her shoulder and tucking into a roll in an attempt to carry her out of the pair's reach and give her enough space to draw her last weapon, or possibly lever one of the weapons on her vambraces.

But Rayf was too fast for her to even complete this motion, for he put on a burst of speed that was only possible for a Force-user, closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye and swinging his wan-shen with frightening power. The butt of the weapon disappeared into the depths of her hood and cracked against her chin, eliciting a cry of pain and sending the woman sprawling on her back in the mud hard enough to vacate her lungs of her air. Rayf tossed his weapon to the side and bore down upon the sniper, keeping her pinned and further hampering her breathing by pressing a knee into her clavicle and seizing her left arm, pulling it vertical so that it could be pulled free of its socket or snapped in half if the Corellian applied the right amount of force and leverage. The sniper struggled a moment as she attempted to dislodge Rayf from his perch atop her, but her struggles ceased when Foyi stepped beside the two of them and leveled the E-11s at her hidden face. She went limp almost immediately, and lay there gasping.

"You're not going to kill us because we have you at a disadvantage," Foyi snarled, the end of the sniper rifle hovering mere centimeters from the woman's face.

Rayf gave the woman a stern glare, but there was still a smirk on his lips. "I hope that's an acceptable reason for you, sweetheart."

The woman gave a lengthy gasp, and Rayf raised his knee just enough to allow her to draw in a deep breath. "Maybe...maybe I was a bit hasty in assuming the two of you were my enemies. If you've...spent any length of time on this world, you'll find...it's best to treat strangers with a healthy amount of suspicion. Or just blast 'em. Nothin' personal...just trying to keep myself alive."

"We typically take threats and blaster bolts personally," Foyi answered in a deadly tone of voice.

"Don't mind my cousin", Rayf added nonchalantly. He stood upright, dragging the defeated sniper up with him and extricating the ACP Scatter Gun from her back, then backed away a full meter before aiming the weapon at the woman's chest. "We actually get shot at all the time. Or rather, I do. This whole 'fleeing from a hail of blasterfire every planet we visit' thing is relatively new to her, and she just hasn't acclimated yet."

Foyi shot him a disapproving glare, but made certain her attention never fully left their impromptu prisoner. "What I haven't _acclimated_ to is your awful sense of humor, you nerfherder."

"That hurts, Foyi. That really does."

"It's a wonder the two of you just proved to be so capable, considering how you don't seem to get along," their prisoner interjected, her voice no longer breathy for want of oxygen. Indeed, an attitude of calm, even self-assured haughtiness, suffused her Force presence; if she had held any fear for how the tables had been so quickly turned upon her, she felt none of it now. "It's been...awhile since I've seen Force-users at work. I fear I've underestimated you."

Foyi shifted the sniper rifle's stock against her shoulder, not quite able to hide the surprise that leaked through to her countenance. "You know of the Force? Is that how your voice was in our heads?"

The woman snorted, as though Foyi's question had been completely ridiculous, and reached up to draw the hood back from atop her head, revealing a gaunt, haggard countenance, dark eyes, leathery skin in shades of brown and pink, and horns that emerged from her cranium and curved downward to either side of her face. Rayf made a minute gasp of recognition at the revelation of the woman's species, but it took Foyi a moment to reach the same realization, for she had only seen holos of Iktotchi, and had never met one before. She could not remember much information regarding their homeworld, society, or physiology, but she did recall that the Iktotchi were naturally telepathic, and supposedly possessed minor precognitive abilities. Such would explain the voice she had been able to project in their thoughts, as well as the fact that she seemed to have anticipated the movements that had led to her being disarmed and threatened by those she had similarly threatened, though her reactions to this prescient knowledge had been too slow to counteract the Force-enhanced reaction times of both Foyi and Rayf. Standing within such close proximity, Foyi could not sense any connection to the Force in this woman, and parts of her were relieved, while others were disappointed. She would have been delighted to meet another Force-sensitive, as she had met far more than she could ever have predicted since leaving Yanibar, but the part of her that was relieved reminded her of how many of those Force-users had been deeply tainted by the Dark Side, which was a frightening eventuality on a world such as the one they stood, where the very fiber of Felucia's being seemed to be ill with the Dark Side. The Iktotchi woman turned to regard Foyi with an impassive stare, crossing her arms across her chest as though she were merely having a pleasant conversation. "Girl, I'm old enough to remember the Jedi Order and what it meant to the Republic, no matter how much Palpatine's 'New Order' tries to pretend none of it every existed. Hell, I was a little girl when that whole fiasco when some Jedi Masters tangled with the Red Iaro on Malastare. I'm aware of the Force, but I can't access it, as the two of you obviously do. Some of us have to make our ways through the galaxy by relying on something other than religion and magic tricks."

Rayf cocked a brow. "A little telepathy and precognition probably doesn't hurt either, eh?"

The woman nodded, conceding the point. She turned her head back and forth, her gaze lingering on the rancor lying several meters away, its limbs continuing to twitch infrequently, its shoulders quivering and heaving. "Look. The two of you find me interesting enough to talk to, I'm flattered, truly. But there are better places to talk than in the middle of the Felucian wilderness at night, by a rancor that isn't even close to dead."

Foyi's eyes opened wide in alarm as she too turned to regard the rancor with more than just her eyes. She could feel its life essence in the Force, one that seemed to wax and wane with each breath, and its mind, filled with semi-sentient thoughts of hunger and confusion was rapidly becoming defused with rage and awareness. The rancor, despite its grievous wounds, was still alive, awakening from whatever the Iktotchi had done to it, and actually _wanted_ vengeance. Rayf was eerily calm, though his words expressed his concern when he faced the sniper again, gesturing with the ACP Array Gun he clutched in his hands. "You didn't kill it?"

"I was meaning to," she replied irritably. "It's hard to punch through a rancor's skin, even with that E-11s you stole from me; not even the wounds it sustained from my sniper fire will kill it. I did that to weaken the skin enough that I could get a Lecepanine dart into its softer tissues and knock it out for awhile, just long enough that I could move in for the kill. That is, until you distracted me."

The rancor was beginning to growl, a throaty gurgle that Foyi felt shivering through her _lekku_. The Iktotchi woman's calm, detached facade slipped for a moment as she regarded the rancor, which had seemed to regain most of its motor functions, and was pressing its widely-splayed claws deep into the mud in an effort to lift its bulk upright. The Iktotchi quickly whirled on Rayf, a glare in her eyes that spoke of the seriousness of their situation. "Give me the gun back."

Foyi sighted down the length of the sniper rifle, curling her lip into a snarl. "Absolutely not."

The woman made a placating gesture toward Rayf, beckoning for him to hand over the ACP. "I only need it for a moment, to make sure that beast doesn't get up and swallow us whole, since neither one of you seem too eager to preserve your lives." Her gaze flicked to needle Foyi. "If I try anything you don't like, you can blast me to your heart's content. But unless either one of you know how to properly bring that big _murglak_ down so it doesn't get back up again, I'm going to need my gun back."

Foyi's regard flicked back and forth between the woman she did not remotely trust, and the rising threat of the rancor, which was still struggling, barely supported by weak and shaking arms that seemed to be regaining their strength with each passing moment. To her utter shock, Rayf shrugged and tossed the ACP back to the Iktotchi, drawing his own WESTAR-34 in the same motion. The Iktotchi deftly caught her returned weapon, and without a second glance at her captors, sprinted across the intervening gap of forest between herself and the rancor, whereupon she paused beside the left side of the rancor's head, where the ragged and charred skin on its neck and face were. The rancor gave a wheezing growl as it tried to rise, while at the same time bringing its claws to bear upon the woman it dwarfed, but the Iktotchi showed no fear as she leveled the weapon and pulled the trigger. A sudden flash of energy particles screamed from the barrels of the gun, impacting the wounded side of the rancor's head with another spray of blood. The rancor screamed in agony and flopped back to the mud, but the Iktotchi woman was not done, cocking the weapon and firing again, as quickly as she was able to repeat those motions until the cartridges in the weapon's magazine were spent. Each burst seemed to punch through deeper layers of the rancor's throat and cranium, until the blood erupting from the wounds was slick and chunky with gore and chips of skull, spattering the front of the woman's shadowsuit and cloak, though she was not bothered by it at all. With each successive shot, the rancor's screams grew softer and longer, until its last breath exited its lungs with a wailing rush of air. The Iktotchi, who had one last cartridge to expend, took careful aim and fired, and the impact became a short-lived fountain of glistening slush and blood as her onslaught opened the rancor's brain cavity and spilled most of the matter on the muddy ground. Satisfied with her work, the Iktotchi reached into her belt for cartridges, reloaded the weapon, then strode back to them and handed the gun back to Rayf, who gladly accepted it with a nod, though the serene expression that typically described his features had slipped slightly. "That was cold," he remarked with a slight tone of condemnation.

The Iktotchi shrugged. "The rancor was in pain, and a wounded beast is not something you want on your afterburners."

"Either one of us could have done that," Foyi interjected suspiciously. She was attempting to sound confident and ruthless, to establish a sense of power and authority in relation to the dangerous woman before them. But inwardly, she struggled with attempting to imagine whether she could have put the suffering creature out of its misery in such a ruthless and brutal manner. Certainly, if the rancor had gotten back to its feet, it would have undoubtedly tried to tear them to shreds in its jagged jaws, but she could not hate an animal for following its natural instincts. Even so, she could not help but silently condemn the woman for her ability to so mercilessly slaughter such a living creature, and she almost opened her mouth to say something to express her feelings, but she was interrupted by images of Lido's broken body, of the charred hole in his chest, and she kept her tongue. They all had blood on their hands.

The woman nodded her agreement. "I'm sure you could have, girl. But then I wouldn't have been able to demonstrate to you my sincerity and willingness."

"Willingness to do what?" Rayf begged the obvious question.

"To work with the two of you, of course," the Iktotchi replied in that maddening tone that suggested she knew everything there was to know in the universe, and was waiting for everyone else to catch up. "I've had a vision...a vision of the future, where we band together, and maybe, just maybe, we all get what we're after."

Foyi and Rayf exchanged a glance. Rayf shrugged, and Foyi rolled her eyes, then stretched out in the Force again, doing her best to ignore the pressing, metaphysical weight of the Dark Side settling down upon her like a smothering cloak. She sent a tendril of searching thought toward the Iktotchi, and was answered by the eddies of her surface thoughts, which was a kaleidoscope of emotions, all of which betrayed the calm and collected expression she wore on her countenance. The woman felt anxiety, hostility, confusion regarding her aforementioned precognitive vision, juxtaposed with a certainty that the future she had glimpsed was not a lie, nor was it steering her astray. And underlying all this was a vast, dark undertow of grief and simmering rage, an unquenchable thirst for vengeance for the infliction of a wound upon her soul that had never healed, a wound that continued to actively fester. An old wound.

As she made these discoveries regarding the woman's mental state, Rayf lowered the barrel of the ACP he held, though he kept it ready, in case he had to bring it to bear once more. "And what exactly do you think we're after?"

Foyi could feel the anger beginning to radiate from the Iktotchi woman, though her face remained impassive. "The Shepherd. You're here for him...I must admit, I don't like the idea of splitting him three ways, but I could use the help. This planet is some new kind of Hutt hole; if it isn't the colonists desperate for survival risking shots across the bow at anything that moves, it's the Imperials trying to raze the jungle to the ground. And then, there's those things." She hooked a thumb in the direction of the pair of corpses submitting to rigor mortis in the mud. "You know they're Force-users? Hard as duracrete to kill..." She paused when a cacophony of roars, hoots, and keening wails echoed through the jungle, indicating a large group of creatures moving noisily through the jungle in the distance, their continuing calls indicating that they were drawing closer to the trio. The sniper turned to face them again. "Even harder to evade."

"More Felucians and rancors?" Rayf asked, concern sharpening the edge of his voice.

"They travel in packs. The one I killed was just a scout who picked up my trail and stumbled on yours. If we want to keep breathing, we should punch it before they arrive."

Rayf grimaced; the Iktotchi made sense. "Alright. Let's relocate and find a defensible position, where we can continue this stimulating conversation regarding wild beasts and destiny and...things." As if to punctuate his assertions, the roars continued with greater tempo, their volume indicating their increasing proximity.

The Iktotchi woman sprang into action, beginning to jog in the direction the deceased rancor and rider had been traveling. "Follow. I know of a place where we can find some cover from this hunting party."

Foyi and Rayf hurried to catch up, letting the woman lead them through the darkness and amidst the underbrush, the Iktotchi's shadowsuit guaranteeing that she barely made any sound, even as her speed and recklessness increased in relation to the roars drawing closer. Foyi, still holding the sniper rifle, sped up her pace until she drew beside the woman, and hissed in a breathless, hopeful voice, "How much of this area have you scouted?"

"Most of the region around the battlefield," she replied, her voice even despite the increasing speed with which they ran.

"Have you...have you seen any trails left by landspeeders? Or maybe a repulsortruck?"

"Actually, I have. I was following the trail back to the battlefield to see where it led when I was nearly run down by that Felucian. Why?"

"We think it's the path used...by the Shepherd. You were right," Foyi added begrudgingly. "We're looking for the Shepherd, too."

A slight grin curled the sniper's lips as she ran, amused by the realization of her own assertions. "I thought as much. Let us reach somewhere safer than the middle of the jungle, and perhaps we can begin sharing information."

"Well, if we're all going to be sharing," Rayf called as he ran up between them, "then maybe we should start with sharing names. Unless we all want to go by species names. I'm Rayf, and my angry cousin is Foyi."

"Cousins, hm?" the Iktotchi replied in a manner that suggested she sincerely doubted they had any familial relation. "Very well. I'm Vaevi. Vaevi Zshi. Maybe I won't regret blasting your heads to spacedust after all."

"Glad to hear that's no longer in the cards," Rayf replied cheerfully.

"I never said that."

"You better try," Foyi growled as they ducked through a natural tunnel created by overarching limbs of fungi and mushroom caps. "Vision and common goal or not, you keep talking like that, _Vaevi_ , and you won't get to play sabacc again."

* * *

The night had grown old, the sky lightening above the fungal canopies, before the trio fleeing through the Felucian jungle found they felt marginally secure enough in which they could rest. The Iktotchi calling herself Vaevi Zshi clambered ahead of Foyi and Rayf, grasping a tumble of stones that led up a steep embankment that Foyi had not been able to see initially due to the thicket of mushrooms and bulbous stalks gracing its peak. The Iktotchi scrambled up the stones with quick but precise movements, reaching the cover of the mushrooms' shadows while Foyi and Rayf picked their way carefully behind. Upon reaching the top, Vaevi turned and offered Rayf a hand, and though she could have easily made a move for any of the weapons Rayf carried on him while he was in such a compromised position, she pointedly did not. She similarly offered a hand to Foyi, but the Twi'lek stubbornly refused, slinging the E-11s over her shoulder and putting on a burst of Force-enhanced speed that propelled her to the top of the slope in a blink of an eye. And even as Vaevi was attempting to realign her gaze to the Twi'lek's new position, Foyi had already grasped the sniper rifle in hand and aimed it at Vaevi's head.

The three of them crept deeper into the tangle of mushrooms, then crouched in the shadows, which were still oily and thick, despite the approaching light of dawn. They paused and listened, tuning their ears to every movement of the hunting party they had yet to see with their naked eyes. Never at any point during the night had their pursuers bothered to move through the jungle stealthily, or attempt to use their superior knowledge of the local terrain to locate their quarry. They had merely followed the trails left in the wake of the trio's flight, the sounds of their primal calls and the roars of the rancors they used as mounts announcing their presence for kilometers. Thus, it had been simple for the trio to sketch out a false trail and to diverge from it, keeping well ahead of the Felucians and rancors hunting them, then peeling off into the deeper, darker parts of the wilderness, but still not straying too far from the ragged, scoured edges of the Clone Wars battlefield.

They waited amongst the fronds, tendrils, and stalks atop the ridge, barely able to see in the alternating shadows and streams of light from Felucia's primary. None of them could see the hunting party as it drew closer, but the increasing proximity of the natives' shouted hoots and shrieks, the snuffling and low growls of their rancor mounts, described their position relative to the trio's as assuredly as sight would have. Foyi heard them pause over a dozen meters away, near the foot of the ridge's slope, the rancors' cacophonous feet shuffling and pounding the mud anxiously. There was a lengthy period of grunts and screeches as the Felucians conversed in an unknown tongue, which eventually ended with a keening holler that echoed throughout the forests. With that, the hunters peeled off, meandering deeper into the jungle's tracts of interminable fungal growths, molds, and clearings of mud bisected by small fetid ponds and dark rivers. It was not long before what little could be heard of their number was lost in the discordant cacophony of sounds of both flora and fauna that seemed omnipresent within the Felucian jungles.

Vaevi let out a lengthy, controlled exhale. "Well done. Despite how easily I found the two of you last time, you are both surprisingly skilled at moving unnoticed when you wish."

"That's high praise from a bounty hunter," Rayf replied as he leaned against the expansive base of a sticky, drooping mushroom.

"So it is," Vaevi replied positively. "My kind tend to work alone, and therefore are used to relying on our own abilities, rarely trusting anyone to even be competent enough to keep up with us. So far, the two of you are a welcome exception. It should make this whole partnership easier on all of us."

"You assume a lot from people you just met, and threatened to kill instead of offering a proper greeting as introduction," Foyi snarled, keeping the sniper rifle trained on the bounty hunter, though Vaevi had yet to make any move that would invite a blaster bolt.

Vaevi shrugged, as though none of these past events should matter even in the slightest. "I gotta good feeling about the two of you; a feeling that goes against my instincts as a bounty hunter, sure, but we Iktotchi learn to trust the visions we have, as they're rare this far from Iktotch. Not that I've ever been there, but that doesn't seem to matter," she muttered as an aside.

Foyi raised a skeptical brow. "You're saying a vision told you to work with us?"

"I'm saying, a vision showed us working together. Whether that's to our mutual benefit or detriment, I couldn't say, though I suspect the former, considering we're all here for the Shepherd, and I can tell by the faces you make every time I mention that name, girl, that you aren't here to play a friendly game of dejarik with him. The two of you seem relatively sane for spacers actually willing to brave Felucia's jungles, so you definitely want him badly enough to risk a lot coming here. So, I'll offer you a deal: you give me back my weapons, and we all find the Shepherd together, bring him back alive or dead depending on the fuss he gives us, and we can split the bounty three ways."

"You seem certain that 'the Shepherd' is an actual person," Rayf remarked, scratching his chin in concentration. "And you keep referring to the Shepherd as 'he'."

"Sixty thousand credits says the Shepherd's real," Vaevi replied flippantly, though Foyi's sense of her emotions told her that the woman was intentionally trying to be evasive. "And if he just turns out to be some Lord Nyax ghost story, the pronouns I used to describe him don't really matter, do they?"

Rayf considered that for a moment. "You make a valid point. And sixty thousand is easily divisible by three..." That last comment elicited a jab from Foyi's elbow, and he flashed her a roguish grin that only served to further infuriate her.

Foyi turned her glare upon Vaevi, and the Iktotchi met it with an unreadable expression. Her thoughts were difficult to perceive, though Foyi did not require the Force to realize the woman was not being entirely truthful regarding her motivations. "We're not interested in the bounty," Foyi replied evenly.

Vaevi nodded her head in consideration. "Then you must be here to recover something he stole from you. _Someone_ he stole from you. A child perhaps? A brother? A sister?"

Foyi kept her expression neutral. "My sister. She was taken...a week or so ago. The trail led us here, to the supposed Shepherd, who hides somewhere in these Force-forsaken jungles."

Vaevi turned to Rayf, puzzlement on her face. "And you? What's this girl to you?"

"She's my cousin, too."

Vaevi furrowed her brow; whether she found the idea of a Twi'lek and human being related laughable, or simply did not believe the Matukai Adept was unclear. She sat in the mud beneath one of the bulbous stalks of fungi, bringing her knees up to her chest and rocking on her haunches. "Then I propose a partnership between us...you help me track down the Shepherd and bring him in to collect in whatever shape we put him in, and we'll find where he's holding your sister. Likely, it'll be a place relatively easy to find once we locate the area of the jungle he's been using as his personal exogorth cave, and judging by the other victims of his I've studied, he prefers to keep them alive, at least for a little while." She leaned forward, meeting Foyi's eyes. "Your sister is probably alive, girl. I can't speak for what kind of shape she's in, but if she was kidnapped by the Shepherd's proxies only a week or so ago, then she's still breathing. Most likely. It's the way the mudcrutch likes to play with the children he kidnaps."

Rayf gave Foyi a look that was a mixture of hope and fear. Foyi could barely breathe as she forced herself to ask the invited question. "What does he...what does he do to them?"

Vaevi shrugged nonchalantly, but the slight sharpening of her features, the clenching of her jaw, and the sudden swirl of jagged thoughts that swam over the surface of her mind showed that she found whatever horrors she was bout to relate disturbing, despicable even. "He seems to...mess with their minds somehow. I mean, far beyond simple telepathy of those like me and other telepathic species. The slavers who take jobs for him snatch children off the streets of almost any world, with no pattern to their grabs, and the kids go missing and are never heard from again. Most of the time. But sometimes, an Outer Rim Imperial patrol or an enterprising spacer will find their bodies deposited in lonely corners of the galaxy, on worlds almost no one treads, floating through the black of space at locations where pilots usually stop to recalculate their routes. When examined, their bodies show signs of extreme malnutrition and emaciation, deadly levels of stress, and wounds both superficial and mortal. Some of these are self-inflicted, while others are from low-yield blasters or simple, bladed weapons wielded with very little strength. Some forensics analysts have even linked some of these bodies together on similar timetables, and suggested that not only were they held and tortured in the same locations, but may have known each other, perhaps even killed each other. And some bodies show enormous levels of mastication and deep slashes from claws and teeth, like they were killed by large predators who never bothered to finish devouring their corpses."

"Did any of these marks match the jaws from a rancor?" Rayf asked.

Vaevi nodded, her expression still tightly pinched. "Some of them did. Or, at least, creatures like rancors. Most of the bodies, by the time they were found, were so badly damaged and decayed by both their circumstances and the exposure to the environment or vacuum in which they were found, so there are far too few reports that are as accurate and complete as they should be. Most local law enforcements just bury the reports, chalking it all up to a kid who wanders off while their parents visit a place they don't have the good sense to stay away from. Others say the body belongs to a kid who was too stupid or inexperienced to realize that opening an airlock in hard vacuum is a good way to meet their destinies."

"So how did these...kids lead you here? I mean, to Felucia?" Rayf prompted.

Vaevi massaged her forehead, dredging up the memories of her journey to Felucia in what had obviously been a painful experience. "I studied the kids' bodies myself. The ones that were still in morgues, and hadn't been buried, cremated, or tossed in a trash compactor. The ones that could still be identified as the remains of sentient beings." Vaevi paused here to school her expression back to a neutral one, and Foyi felt a pang of regret for initially assuming this woman was merely a cold-hearted killer, trudging through the jungle to answer an insatiable desire for credits. But she continued with a controlled voice. "The more bodies I studied, no matter how old and decayed they were, I began to discover some commonalities between them. Almost none of them belonged to the same species, but there always seemed to be an equal ratio between males and females in each group. What was even more puzzling was the fact that all the males were of twelve standard years of age, while all the females were fourteen..."

Foyi could not hide the shock from her features. "My sister's fourteen."

"Then she fits the pattern the Shepherd has been using for as long as I have been tracking him," Vaevi confirmed. "But I found another curious similarity amongst the corpses. Upon close examination, I found in over half of them unique kinds of spores and traces of fungal residue, usually smeared into the creases of their skin or lodged in their olfactory organs. This biological material either overlooked or completely ignored in each of the autopsies; apparently, the investigators didn't find it worth noting. Or maybe, they did follow the trail left by the spores, and seeing that it led to Felucia, decided against making a journey here."

"But you decided for," Rayf supplied.

Vaevi gave him a feral grin. "The credits are good. Not to mention the bump in my rep for bringing this Shepherd _murglak_ in. Most bounty hunters think he's a myth and don't even bother, but to be responsible for catching this piece of filth, well...I'm perfectly fine with thinking that in my own way, I could be getting some justice for those kids. No child should die like that."

"You sure other bounty hunters won't beat you to the score?" Rayf asked coyly. "It's an awful lot of credits. What if someone like Dengar, or Boba Fett gets to him first?"

"Dengar? Boba Fett? Who?" Foyi asked.

Rayf gave her a long-suffering look. "Boba Fett. Only the best and most famous bounty hunter in the galaxy."

Vaevi snorted at his assertions. "I don't think I'll have to worry about other hunters, unless the two of you aren't actually what you claim to be. As for Boba Fett, this bounty is way below his interest; the score would have to be a true fortune before he pulled his pompous head out of his pretentious afterburners. And if there are any other hunters out there looking for this guy, I'll just have to...discourage them." Vaevi shrugged as she looked out into the lightening dawn and inky shadows of the jungle. "Not that there isn't already plenty here to discourage competition."

Foyi nodded. "You mentioned scavengers and natives. And Imperials."

"And all the predators roaming the jungles," Vaevi added. "Which would explain some of the marks I found on the bodies. If the Shepherd has his own pets he sets on the children he kidnaps, or just releases them into the jungle to be hunted down and killed by the rancors, acklays, and whatever else is large enough to perceive sentient beings as prey, then he must have some form of shelter or base from which he runs his whole slave ring. Those bodies...those spores, have led me here thus far." She gave a helpless shrug. "Unfortunately, I've had little in the way of leads since then. Mostly, I've been following my visions, seeing where they take me on this backwater, looking for signs of proper civilization or any evidence that this is the epicenter of the Shepherd's sick games."

"Have you found anything useful regarding the Shepherd?" Rayf queried, propping the ACP Scatter Gun on his knees.

"Have _you_?"

Rayf and Foyi exchanged a look that, to an outside observer, was cryptic to say the least, and almost completely unreadable. But the connection they had forged through their ordeals had attuned them to each others' surface thoughts and feelings, and though both were naturally suspicious regarding this dangerous would-be ally and the motivations she was not entirely truthful about, they needed to only meet the others regard to come to the agreement that both of them could use all the help they could get. Foyi begrudgingly made this assertion, though Rayf seemed more positive about the idea of allying themselves with Vaevi, which still did nothing to drop the caution and readiness cultivated in him by years of trying to mask his abilities and identities from the Empire and other unsavory individuals who looked unkindly upon those gifted with sensitivity to the Force.

Foyi finally lowered the sniper rifle, and with a slow but steady motion, she flipped the E-11s around and offered the stock to the Iktotchi. Vaevi accepted it gladly, and Foyi let her entire body tense, ready to spring upon the bounty hunter if she attempted to use the weapon, despite the awkwardness of utilizing the longblaster in such a confined space. Instead, Vaevi simply slung the weapon over her shoulder and returned to her previously seated position, giving Rayf a significant look, awaiting the return of her Scatter Gun. Rayf shrugged, then passed the weapon to her, accompanied with the C-10 Heavy Blaster Pistol of hers that he had scooped up, and she similarly replaced her returned weapon upon her back. As she did so, Foyi provided the reply to her question. "We believe so. We landed our ship at an old Separatist platform where the Shepherd receives the kidnapped children from slavers, and we were following a trail made by landspeeders or repulsortrucks through the jungle leading away from there. The trail showed signs of recent use, and we believe that if we can locate it again, we can follow it to where the Shepherd is keeping the children he takes." Foyi braced her forehead on her palm in consternation. "But then we lost it in that old battlefield...that horrible, burned place. We were looking for where it resumed along the jungle's edge, when we came across that Felucian and rancor hunting you down."

"Which you dealt with _spectacularly_ , just in case you haven't gotten the credit you're due," Rayf added. "I don't know anyone who can take down a rancor so quickly without getting at least a few scrapes in the process. Though it was still unnecessarily messy."

Vaevi shrugged. "Rancors are such tough bastards...honestly, I don't know if there is a clean way to kill 'em."

Foyi made a slashing motion with her hand. "If we're going to work together, we should all remain focused. Focused on finding the Shepherd, and rescuing my sister...and anyone else he might be holding captive. Vaevi, you mentioned that you were following the trail we discovered, if I heard you correctly. Do you think you can find it again?"

"I can," Vaevi replied simply. She stood upright and peered through the fungal stalks, the dripping fingers of drooping mushrooms providing cover for the trio upon the ridge. She studied the jungle beyond intently, as though looking for landmarks or recognizable features with which she could gather her bearings. Her gaze lit up, and she turned to Foyi and Rayf. "We're only a few klicks from the old battlefield, and I was chased from the deeper parts of the jungle to the burned plains. We've actually backtracked over much of the ground I previously covered, so the trail we were all following should be..." She gestured between two warty stalks of mushrooms, through which could barely be glimpsed a dense portion of the jungle that remained dark and foreboding, despite the weak, grainy light of the sun attempting to sheer through the atmosphere thick with spores and humidity. "Somewhere in there. It's rough terrain, and the Felucian hunting parties seem to be thick in those parts of the jungle. From all the tracks I've seen, I'm guessing one of their villages is nearby, but I've been mostly successful in avoiding them; there are a lot of hiding places in those dark thickets, and tight spaces their pet rancors have difficulty traversing. Plus, I haven't seen any signs of Imperial patrols, so it's makes sense to me that our mutual quarry would cut a path through that. It's like the Maw in there."

Foyi, who had stretched out with questing currents toward the bounty hunter, could sense no deceit on her part. She similarly stood, squeezing her eyes shut momentarily as she experienced a wave of vertigo. Her body was still attempting to heal, and the constant exertion she had placed upon it since awakening from her medically-induced slumber was eating away at her stamina. Foyi sank more deeply and completely within the Force's bolstering waters, then opened her eyes to regard their new ally and guide. "Lead the way, then."

Rayf sprang to his feet, remaining perfectly limber and energetic; their flight through the jungle apparently not sapping his stamina in the slightest. "Let's go drop in on the Shepherd and _really_ ruin his day."

Both Foyi and Rayf marched forward, passing between the two mushrooms and carefully picking their trek down the steep and slippery slope of the ridge, keeping their senses attuned to the jungle around them and the Force suffusing the planet, trying to pick out any potential threats in the morass of life essences and energies tainted by the Dark Side. Vaevi followed quickly behind, her steps hurried yet careful, so that she seemed to clamber, scramble, and leap down the jagged rocks and mud slicks of the slope with the grace of someone born with familiarity to such terrain. Despite her lack of reliance upon the Force for balance and speed, Vaevi reached the bottom of the slope at almost the same moment that Foyi and Rayf did, and the unlikely companions immediately dropped as one into the thicker tangled of fungal undergrowth, so that they would not be easily spotted from a distance.

Vaevi pointed into the alternating speckling of light and darkness in the forest before them, indicating the copse of mushrooms that seemed to be just the perimeter of a section of overgrowth that was particularly ill with the Dark Side's taint. In spite of the rising sun and the aging morning, the grove she indicated barely let any light pass its canopy, and just looking at it gave Foyi a nauseous feeling in her stomach as the cold undertow of the Dark Side splashed against her consciousness with renewed vigor.

The bounty hunter looked to her pair of companions, saw the pained expressions on their faces, then faced back toward the objective she had pointed out for them. "That's where I last left the trail. There are a lot of choke points and locations for excellent ambushes in there, so we must be careful, unless you want to be set upon by Felucians and rancors like a bunch of kath hounds." She returned her attention to them, a query evident on her features. "By the way...I don't think I ever got your names."

"Foyi," the Twi'lek bit out, her eyes skeptically searching the noisy and eerie jungle about them.

"Name's Rayf. Rayf Moors," Rayf answered more flamboyantly. "Pleasure to formally make your acquaintance. Maybe now we can get going, unless you want to sit down for a hand of sabacc while we're getting to know each other so well in the middle of these slimy mushrooms?"

Vaevi snorted as she turned away from him. "Just wanted to know who exactly I'm walking into hell with if we all die."


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

The dark, twisted boles of gargantuan mushrooms and twisting, gnarled fronds of fungal matter loomed above, clawing grotesquely at the sky and selfishly hoarding the darkness cast by their shadows, denying the light of Felucia's primary from reaching the forest floor. The muddy ground was as broken and undulating as the foliage that crept over it; what was not steeped in thick mud was covered in rich clusters of mold, or dropped away in sudden gorges and precarious ledges, some of which had standing water that was more slime than aqueous liquid from the large volumes of spores suffusing it. The fungal growths and protrusions were claustrophobic in their proximity, and there were many spaces between individual specimens that were barely large enough for a Chadra-Fan to slip between, much less the single-file procession of Iktotchi, Twi'lek, and human that trekked through the diseased depths of the jungle laden with equipment and weapons. They picked their way through the tightly-knit jungle carefully and quietly, moving low and fast, and focusing on making as little sound or evidence of their passage as possible. Vaevi led the way, carrying her E-11s before her, occasionally stopping to peer through the scope on the weapon to get a more comprehensive view of what lay ahead of them in the deepest shadows beneath the towering stalks. Foyi followed directly behind, her discblade gripped in one hand and her supernatural senses sweeping the immediate area for any approaching threats. Rayf brought up the rear, his wan-shen in hand, which he used in alternating capacities as a walking stick and a means by which he could clear particularly stubborn fungal obstacles slowing the group.

They proceeded into the dim, fell part of the forests, the Dark Side pressing more insistently upon the trio's consciousnesses. Even Vaevi, bereft of the Force, could sense the darkness inherent in this part of the jungles, the sheer _wrongness_ of the place through which they trekked. It took them mere moments before they began to discover evidence of other creatures having passed through this way, both recently and in an unknown point during the past. Some of the larger, more resilient mushrooms showed old scars and weeping wounds that had mostly healed, but the growth of new fungal tissue betrayed the existence of this previous damage. Some of the furrows in the ground appeared to have been created by some tool or force beyond the meandering entropy instigated by erosion. Occasionally, they would find a corpse barely recognizable as the remains of a humanoid creature, due to the mold and fungi clutching to their desiccated bones. Foyi paused at one of these corpses when she caught a flash of white in the dim illumination, and was surprised and disconcerted to pull a stormtrooper's helmet from the mud, the head that had once worn it consumed by Felucia's ravenous jungles, the whole right side of the headgear caved in sharply. She tossed the helmet back to the ground and refocused her attention forward, though her mind began to conjure stormtroopers and Felucians lurking in the shadows ahead of them. Rayf was similarly distracted by a scattered set of bones that might have once belonged to one of the Jungle Felucians. He extracted a lengthy, jagged stretch of bone with a sharpened edge. One end tapered into a protrusion wrapped with leather and strips of plant matter, describing a hilt for its wielder to grip. Upon the edge opposite the sharpened one protruded a few jagged fangs, and only with closer inspection could Rayf see that the weapon, if that was what the object was meant to be, possessed a slot that may have once been an eye socket, suggesting that the implement had been fashioned from the angular skull of an unknown creature. He held it up for Foyi to see, but the Twi'lek merely glanced at it and continued to follow Vaevi into the thicker brush. So Rayf dropped the angular length of bone back in the mud, and trudged onward, keeping his wan-shen in front of him.

Vaevi offered little guidance beyond where she chose to place her feet amongst the morass of mud, treacherous slopes, and effulgent colonies of mold, as well as the directions she chose to slink through the undergrowth and beneath the wide canopies of the dark mushrooms above. The taint of the Dark Side was palpable, even tactile in this grove, which was soon becoming something far larger and wilder than a simple localized section of the jungle; indeed, Foyi suspected that the sickly flora they had witnessed and traveled through before had merely been the farthest reaches of the Dark Side's effects upon this world. Or perhaps, in keeping with the insidious and chaotic nature of the Dark Side, not all areas of Felucia's jungles were affected equally by the sickness that pervaded the world. Whereas Felucia's atmosphere was naturally suffused with spores, producing a dense and gritty quality that defused light from the rising sun, there was a veritable pall hanging upon the jungle now, as though the spores thickening the air had taken on a supernatural darkness all their own. The humidity in the air felt old and rotten, and Foyi was certain a clammy, viscous residue was building up in her esophagus every time she took a breath. She fought the urge to cough and spit, and kept moving forward, pushing the clinging, gnarled protrusions and fungal appendages of Felucian flora away from her limbs and face with both her hands and small, telepathic applications of the Force. She found it difficult to maintain a sure footing on the rough and uneven terrain they slunk over, for they were coming to an area that had a pronounced downward slope, and the continuing weakness of her legs and her own offset equilibrium nearly made her tumble headlong down the slope on more than one occasion. Foyi began drawing from the liquid strength of the Force more completely, trying to ignore the queasy sensations this induced in her as she inevitably touched the Dark Side by proximity. The further they traveled and the more she saw of this world, the greater Foyi's fear for her sister grew; the last few hours had been barely tolerable due to the Dark Side's prevalence upon Felucia. She could not imagine what it must be like for Tama, to have spent days, perhaps a week or more, on this world, constantly battered by the icy sprays of the Dark Side, crashing headlong against her consciousness. Perversely, some part of Foyi welcomed the tainted form of existence the life essences of Felucia had to contend with, the untamed passions and unbridled power that flowed like a vast and dark undercurrent to everything about the world. She vividly remembered tapping into that power on multiple occasions since Tama's kidnapping, and she secretly yearned to submerge herself in it once more, to give her the will and ability to take back that which had been stolen from her, to destroy this creature calling itself the Shepherd for daring to raise a hand against those she loved.

Foyi mentally backed away from such wandering and emotionally charged thoughts, as though standing upon a cold sea cliff and forcing herself to step back from the edge and the plunge into the nexus of seductive power she knew lay beyond. No wonder the natives were so hostile, so ravenously violent and destructive. The Jungle Felucian Vaevi had sniped had been sensitive to the Force, perhaps even a wielder of it as she brought to mind Rayf's relayed rumors regarding an indigenous species with "magical" powers. To live as a Force-sensitive on this world was to be constantly tempted by the Dark Side that was like a cancer festering upon its unique and interconnected presence in the Living Force, and it was likely almost any native they met would have fallen to their darker aspects already.

Vaevi suddenly stopped and brought a hand up to signal a halt. Both Foyi and Rayf crept to either side of her, to find that she crouched at the lips of a cliff that had been constructed more of sheered protrusions of fungal matter than dirt. The cliff dropped away into a gorge thick with shadows, nine meters or so at its deepest, with several other rises and grooves in the ground that formed tiered slopes down into its depths. Through the haze and by the light of the subdued blue and purple phosphorescence of fungal stalks and occasional blades of sunlight, Foyi could see the bottom of the trench if she concentrated, which showed a muddy floor that had been recently disturbed by multiple tracks of creatures large and small, bipedal and otherwise. What was more intriguing, however, were the trails carved into the mud, caused by the passage of repulsorlifts, some of which had been produced recently, if her low-light vision did not betray her. She could also see random protrusions from the mud around the trail, denoting the presence of other bodies, and a flash of metal suggested some sort of half-buried machinery.

Vaevi unslung her E-11s and adjusted the scope. "This is where I last saw the trail," she explained in a soft voice. "I had been following it from a little way ahead, and when I walked into the crevasse here, I was chased away by that hunting party."

Rayf gestured to the right, where the trail seemed to meander through the trench on a gradual slope. "If I haven't completely lost my bearings...that leads in the direction of the battlefield."

Vaevi nodded. "You have a good sense for direction, spacer."

"When you're used to plotting courses in three dimensional hard vacuum, keeping track of where you are dirtside is a slice of _patogga_."

Vaevi gave him a quizzical look. "I know many spacers who would disagree with that sentiment."

"Those spacers have probably been sucking void too long then."

"Most likely," Vaevi conceded. She suddenly reached out with a hand to catch Foyi's shoulder, for the Twi'lek was in the process of lowering herself from the cliff ledge, so as to drop into the trench below and follow the Shepherd's road, as well as place herself spatially closer to the past presence of the vehicle, and hopefully, her sister. Foyi gave her an irritated look, but Vaevi, not remotely intimidated, pushed her back, then shouldered her sniper rifle. "Hold a moment, girl." Without another word, she took aim and fired across the gap, the brilliant crimson bolt painting the trench's darkness in lurid, sanguine glow for a moment before it impacted a large, bulbous plant clinging to the opposite sides of the trench in a spray of sparks and viscous ichor. Vaevi shifted her aim and fired again, blasting apart another similar plant, and then another, until she had fired a quartet of shots, each one destroying fungal protrusions rooted to the cliff face or upon the muddy tiers, their warty petals of red and white enclosed around central organs Foyi had not the time to see more clearly. Vaevi scanned the immediate environs through her scope, then brought her rifle up and slung it back over her back. "Okay. Now you can rush headlong down there."

Rayf was looking about, as if expecting enemies to suddenly materialize from the mushrooms themselves. "I'm sure those plants deserved the lesson you taught them, though I can't help but wonder if we didn't just give away our position."

Vaevi nodded, unconcerned. "Most likely. But none of us would want to go down in there with those things standing watch. They're called Yerdua Poison-Spitters; the Felucians use them like guard droids. I couldn't tell you whether they're animals or plants, or some combination of both, but they fire globules of a caustic and debilitating chemical with eerie accuracy over several meters. If we had just jumped down in there, we would have been in those things' killbox, and probably still be convulsing in the mud when the natives showed up to finish us off."

Foyi let out a steadying breath. _Does everything on this miserable planet exist to kill us?_ "Thank you." Without further words, Foyi leapt from the cliff to a lower ledge, and then to one beneath that, hopping the several meters down to the floor of the trench, where she landed lightly in the mud beside the trail, animal tracks, and corpses she found there. The atmosphere down here was somehow even more cloying, threatening to smother her with its claustrophobic presence. She centered herself, her focus maintained by the realization that she may not have much time before enemies were undoubtedly attracted by the sounds of blasterfire.

Rayf landed beside her within seconds of her own descent, though Vaevi arrived moments later, her motions slower and more cautious as she searched for enemies. Foyi, having reached deeply into the Force, searching for any sign of her sister's presence, soon opened here eyes. Rayf saw the glimmer of hope on her expression and whispered excitedly, "You've found her?"

"She was here," Foyi assured him. "Not long ago. This is the same trail we were following beforehand."

"I told you it was," Vaevi remarked, as though her pride had been wounded.

Rayf turned to look behind them, where the trail followed the rising ground that eventually led out of the trench. "Well, if we head back that way, it just leads to the old Sep platform we came in on, which won't get us any closer to the Shepherd." He then turned the opposite direction, where the trench continued onward, though the widening of its confining walls, barely perceptible in the pervasive darkness, suggested that the trail took them into a valley, or wider spaces of low country ahead. "And that way...probably leads to more running and blasting."

"And my sister," Foyi added.

"Preferably."

"Keep an eye out for more Poison-Spitters," Vaevi cautioned as they slunk forward, following the direction prescribed by the trench. "My aim's going to be thrown off if I have to haul either one of your limp bodies around."

"Your concern is so sweet, it's nauseating," Rayf quipped.

"Rayf, cool your jets. Vaevi, stop being a voorcat," Foyi admonished both of them. "Let's remember why we're all here, and focus on finding the Shepherd and those he's kidnapped."

As they crept swiftly down the trench's length, Vaevi came to the Twi'lek's side, cocking one brow in a query. "Voorcat, hm? It's been awhile since I've even heard mention of such voracious predators. Have you visited Yanibar often?"

Foyi gave her a dispassionate look, though her mind had expanded beyond her brain, sensing the motivations behind such a question. Being an Iktotchi, Vaevi should have been able to obscure her thoughts to some extent from Foyi's telepathic probes, even without Force sensitivity, but she was not even bothering to do so, laying her mind bare. It was simply a question, a query asked to learn more regarding her newfound allies, one Foyi decided there was little harm in answering, considering Vaevi had revealed a substantial amount of information regarding herself and her own past. Perhaps their partnership could be one reliant upon trust rather than shared goals, if Foyi merely took the opportunity to engender some of that trust. "My sister and I...are from Yanibar. I'm surprised you've even heard of the world."

Vaevi shrugged. "One of my prey believed he could hide in the wildernesses there, counting on the fact that Yanibar doesn't even show up on a lot of starcharts. But where there's an Imperial presence, there are Imperial starcharts, and survey data, and all kinds of useful information for bounty hunters such as myself, no matter how incomplete it is. Honestly, I'm impressed that you chose to live there; that world is barely habitable."

"It's my home. I grew up there. And like all those who do so, you either learn to be hardy, capable, and self-sufficient, or you die."

"Then my beliefs in the resilience and continuing survival of your sister are well-founded."

Foyi gave a puzzled but hopeful glance. "Is that...did you have a vision about my sister?"

Vaevi shook her head. "Nothing pertaining to a fourteen-year-old Twi'lek girl. The precognitive visions of my species are often accurate, but rarely specific. The Jedi of old were said to have the ability to see the future as well, and those of my species who became Jedi were even more accurate in their visions, and could see farther into the future. But even they never spoke of the future in certain terms, for they believed that nothing of the events to come were set in carbonite, that they could be changed by the actions of many or just a few, or by probabilities and events that were unpredictable. My visions have led me here thus far, though I refuse to rely upon them exclusively."

"You've mentioned the Jedi before," Rayf remarked. "Did you know many Jedi before the Dark Times and the Empire?"

Vaevi shook her head, her expression clouded, the sensations of her mind remaining evasive, shrouded from scrutiny. "No. When the Jedi were still around, I, and the life I lived, were so far removed from their Order and religion, I didn't take much notice. Later...experiences changed my views, but by the time I became interested in learning more about the Force, this energy that apparently insures the continuation of existence in the galaxy, the Clone Wars were drawing to a close. Since then, I've tried to learn what I could regarding the Force and the abilities of those who are sensitive to it, which the Empire has only made more difficult with each passing year as part of Palpatine's crusade to erase the existence of the Jedi Order from history and the galaxy." She grimaced. "You see, I have come to believe...that 'the Shepherd'...is like the two of you. A Force-user, albeit one who uses his abilities for nothing but his own game, and to further whatever twisted ideals he believes in. I've hunted him long enough, studied the impact he's left upon people and places around him, and found more than I can explain with mundane capabilities. I believe he is a creature of what the Jedi called the 'Dark Side of the Force'...I mean, I don't profess to be any epitome of virtue myself, but he would have to be, to act in a manner so revolting, so twisted."

"Well, this would certainly be the place for it," Rayf added, looking up at the looming darkness of the heights surrounding them with a paranoid regard. "This world is steeped in the Dark Side. It's rare to feel it so...strongly in such a large area."

Foyi alternated her attention between the path opening up before them, and the Iktotchi walking beside her. "This is more than just business for you, isn't it? You're after more than just a bunch of credits and a boost to your reputation as a bounty hunter."

Vaevi's expression had never been so sharp and severe as she saw it now, though her thoughts continued to be protected, skirting the edges of the waves Foyi sent toward her. "I don't like people hurting children. It's just not...not right."

Foyi would have asked for clarification on this point, but she was distracted by the walls of the gorge rising to disappear into the shadows cast by the humongous caps of the mushrooms standing over the deep valley in which they had found themselves. Before them lay vast stretches of mud interspersed with groves of glowing mushrooms and clusters of mold erupting from the ground. There were small gorges and trenches crisscrossing the valley floor, caused by creeks and streams that were filled with a viscous substance more like slime than water. The valley was hemmed in by more cliffs and deeper, darker sections of the forest, though the contours of the depression stretched on to and past the perimeters of their sight, making it impossible for them to determine the true size of the valley. The trail they had been following descended into it, the marks left by the repulsorlifts still evident in the deep mud; they continued forward for several meters, then curved off to the left, to follow the farthest perimeters of the valley, instead of cutting directly through its middle. Foyi could still feel Tama's presence, like a slight eddying current that brushed just past her skin, though the eddies felt...warmer somehow. As though she had drawn closer, physically or spiritually to Tama. She reached out further, to better define the feelings and sensations the Force granted her, but found it nearly impossible to pierce the roiling depths of the Dark Side, the pall that continued to press sharply upon, and envelop, her mind.

Foyi led the way along the trail, following her emotional connection to her sister and her feelings as much as her sight. The trail curved at a large protrusion emerging from the muddy ground, an immense shard of hard, calcified material that arose from an organic ridge that carved its way for several meters through the mud. The protrusion rose to a dull point well over two meters above her head, its surface rough, scaly, and pitted, marred by mold and deep grooves that may have been the remnants of weapons natural or forged. On instinct, she placed a hand against the spire, and was alarmed to feel a weak Force signature radiating from it, as though it possessed a life of its own. Vaevi came to her side, puzzled by the Twi'lek's interest in the terrain feature. "What have you found?"

Foyi shook her head, glancing around to see other protrusions like it, interspersed amongst the fungal growths and the valley floor in a sweeping curve disappearing into distance and darkness. "I have no idea, but...it feels _alive_ , somehow."

Rayf joined the two women, and brought his own hand to rest against the spire. A thoughtful look came to his face. "You know what it looks like? A tooth."

"A tooth?" Foyi echoed with alarm. She glanced at the curved row of similar structures sweeping through the valley, and tried to imagine them as gargantuan fangs outlining the mouth of a truly colossal creature. A mouth they were practically standing in, if that was so. "What kind of animal could be so large?"

Rayf ran a hand through his damp hair. "A space slug...maybe. Though I've never heard of one making a nest on a habitable planet before."

"If it really belongs to a gigantic creature, will we disturb it from...whatever it's doing by proceeding?" Foyi asked. She had no thoughts of actually turning back; she would gladly walk through the mouth of a space slug, or whatever type of monster they may have happened upon, to rescue her sister. That did not mean she wanted to unnecessarily antagonize such a gargantuan product of freakish evolution if she did not have to.

As if to test her theory, Vaevi unceremoniously walked up to the tooth—if that was what it was—and gave it a solid kick. There was a slight shiver, perhaps a resultant vibration from the force applied by her foot, in the jelly-like material anchoring the protrusion in the ground, but no other response. Both Foyi and Rayf had tensed, ready for something terrible to occur, but when nothing happened, the Iktotchi shrugged and continued walking past the "tooth" and along the trail as it curved toward one of the valley's walls. After a moment, Rayf and Foyi followed, both peering into the shadows and thick foliage, listening for any sound of unknown creatures or monsters determined to consume their flesh. The jungle, which had been filled with the cacophony brought on by morning, was becoming more silent every moment, a hush that was almost religious beginning to fall upon them.

They had walked only a few more meters when Rayf suddenly diverted from the repulsortrucks' path, his eyes fixed upon a rock formation rising at a sharp angle from the ground beside another one of the "teeth". Without explanation, he trotted to its side, prompting Foyi to stop and call after him, "Rayf! What are you doing?! The trail leads this way!"

"Just a nanosecond!" was all that Rayf would offer. Vaevi and Foyi exchanged a look, and the Iktotchi shrugged. Foyi rolled her eyes, grumbling something under breath regarding "easily distracted flyboys" and trotted to Rayf's side, to see the rocks jutting out from the ground were not rocks at all, but rather armored plating, servomotors, and joints so covered in mud and colonies of mold Foyi had to study it from multiple angles before realizing she was looking at wreckage of an Imperial war machine. Specifically, the remains of an AT-ST Walker, having collapsed on its side and spent a significant amount of time sinking into the mud and succumbing to the erosive ravages of Felucia's flora. Rayf walked across the wreckage, perching atop it and studying the contours, how the cockpit of the vehicle appeared to have been crushed, the metal twisted by gigantic fingers instead of warped by the impact with the ground it had fallen upon. One of the legs had been completely severed by something sharp and strong enough to pass cleanly through the armored durasteel, a slight bubbling around the edges of the cut suggesting something that had emitted extreme levels of heat.

Vaevi reluctantly joined them, still keeping her sniper rifle at the ready. "So it's a slagged chicken walker...I told you there were Imperials on this planet, and they have no qualms about leaving their trash behind wherever they go."

"Looks like it's been here awhile, so we probably don't have to worry about the Imps coming back for it," Foyi added. "Come on, Rayf. We have other things to do...like rescue my sister. Crisp a creep. Save the day."

Rayf completely ignored one of the Zeison Sha's rare bouts of humor, his attention solely on the fallen walker as he strode around its wreckage, a troubled expression on his face. He paused beside the severed leg, dropping to a squat and running tentative fingers over the edges of the cut. Foyi was about to encourage him to continue moving with harsher tones, but when she saw his features become haunted, and felt his presence boiling with a bewildering mix of concern, memory, and nostalgia, she squatted beside him to similarly examine the cut. Unfortunately, whatever he was seeing was lost on her. "Rayf? Why is this scrap heap so important right now?"

Rayf ran a hand through his hair again, his eyes still fixed on the wreckage. "I've seen damage like this before...there's only one weapon I know of that is capable of cutting a walker's legs out directly from it."

"What?"

He faced her, and she could not tell what he was thinking; she was uncertain even he knew. "A lightsaber. Someone wielding a lightsaber did this, someone proficient enough with one to stand up to a walker and come out the victor."

Foyi backed away from the wreckage. "The weapon of a _Jedi_."

"Or a Sith," Vaevi offered.

Foyi turned to Rayf again. "You said there were battles here during the Clone Wars...did a Jedi do this in one of those battles?"

Rayf shook his head. "This walker isn't old enough, and the design is clearly Imperial, not from the Grand Army of the Republic. Besides, the Jedi fought on the side with walkers, not battle droids. No...this was done recently, and by someone powerful in the Force..."

"How do you know?" Vaevi asked. "It could have just been someone who stole a lightsaber, and got lucky with it."

Rayf snorted, as though such a suggestion was completely ludicrous. "Lightsabers require a great degree of skill and training to wield without cutting your own extremities off, much less those of your enemies, especially when those extremities are encased in several centimeters of high-grade durasteel. But that's not what I'm talking about...you see how the cockpit's been crushed, how it's actually been twisted and warped? That doesn't happen from falling over...a chicken walker's not that far off the ground."

Foyi studied the wreckage with new revelations. "It does look like a giant hand gave a squeeze and ripped back and forth until it was almost torn apart. If you're saying someone did that with the Force, they would have be incredibly skilled with telekinesis."

"That's a hell of a Force Grip, alright," Rayf agreed. His confused expression had changed to one of excitement, even hope. "This could mean that there was a Jedi here...as recently as a year or so ago."

"Or a Sith," Vaevi insisted again.

"The Sith are allied with the Empire. Why would they attack their own troops?"

"That's just an unsubstantiated rumor."

"It's the _truth_ ," Rayf replied insistently. "The Sith were responsible for the betrayal and destruction of the Jedi, and so many other Force traditions...anyone who might dare to stand against Palpatine's New Order. But there are always rumors that some of the Jedi, and other Force-users, survived the Purge. This could be the evidence right here!"

"What's all the excitement about?" Foyi interjected irritably. "If there is a Jedi here, what if he's in league with the Shepherd?"

Rayf gave her an expression of complete incredulity, as though a whole nest of drochs were busying themselves with sprouting out of the Twi'lek's body at that moment. "That was a serious question, wasn't it? If you actually knew anything about the Jedi, you would realize just how vapebrained that was..."

Foyi opened her mouth to retort, to chastise him for his infatuation with a stiff religion of Force-users, whom, in her opinion, the galaxy was far better without, but she was distracted by Vaevi beside her, who had suddenly gone stock still, as though attempting to listen to something beyond her normal range of hearing. Rayf sensed the sudden tension in the air as well, and the three of them remained silent for a moment, each one training their ears to listen intently for any sound that did not belong. Foyi was alarmed to come to the revelation that the sounds of the birds, animals, and insatiable insects had ceased almost entirely, the din of Felucia's morning producing a dread that seemed to reach from all around her to constrict her chest. Drawing her breath in a brief gasp, Foyi stretched out with careful eddies of feeling and sensation, but just as she did so, Vaevi snapped the sniper rifle to her shoulder and gave a shout of, "Incoming!"

The silence shattered by the bounty hunter's shout was filled with a cacophony of eerie howls, barks, and grunts as emerging from the darkness and the thickest, most obscured portions of the forests spread throughout the valley were several groups of Jungle Felucians, sprinting across the muddy ground and patches of mildewed undergrowth in skittering, loping gaits. In their primary pairs of arms they wielded curved blades of bones, many carved from the skulls and mandibles of large predators, others shaped more like clubs from heavier limbs. Their faces, which were difficult enough to discern due to the obtuse layers of waving tendrils emerging from them, were grotesque and twisted, their mouths gaping, as though weighed down by the immense and jagged rows of fangs that emerged from their jaws, while their clammy skin threw viscous slime like sweat with each erratic movement. They scrabbled across the mud with little balance or means of strategic approach, while some clambered across the tendrils and stalks of gigantic mushrooms like they wore adhesive on their palms and soles, even across sheer slopes in apparent defiance of Felucia's gravity. The Force itself seemed to boil in their presence, and Foyi was momentarily staggered by the waves of undisguised hostility, the blackest emotions rising from their presences like tsunamis of pure hatred, rage, and bloodlust. In the rush and shamble of bodies, Foyi could not determine at a glance how many enemies they were facing, but as of yet, they were not difficult to identify, for they all came in a headlong, suicidal rush from the right of the three gathered in the valley, announcing their charge through the insane and frightening howls they exuded.

As Foyi regained her balance and dropped into a low combat stance, Vaevi immediately spun around and dropped to one knee, pressing herself against one of the large, curving "teeth" and firing a well-placed shot. The rifle's blaster bolt cut across the intervening space and took the leading Felucian Warrior in the sternum, blowing a ragged, ichor-stained hole through his torso and sending the corpse tumbling end over end through the mud. Her next shot impacted another Felucian's elbow, sending the smoldering remains of both forearms attached there sloshing through the mud, and dropping the alien to the ground with a shriek that sounded almost like a mixture between pain and ecstasy. Vaevi shifted the rifle and fired again, but the bolt never found its mark, for the third Felucian she had fired upon gestured with its free appendages before it, and the laserfire impacted a shimmering shield of force that warped the air directly before and around the Felucian's head. In response, while still sprinting and howling like lunatic, the Felucian manipulated the shield of Force energy before it, transforming it into a twisting snarl of energy and atmosphere about its fists that was sickening to even look directly at. Before the bounty hunter could even or take another shot, the Felucian hurled its fists forward, and the shimmering, spiraling sphere of energy raced across the intervening distance, collecting spores, dirt, stones, and debris in its wake before slamming into Vaevi's position of cover with a rush of energy derived directly from the Dark Side. The "tooth" Vaevi leaned against took the brunt of the blast, rocking it viciously in its foundations, but enough of the energy and the detritus that it had collected slammed the bounty hunter with enough violence to send her rolling backward, the E-11s cartwheeling from her hands and bouncing away in the mud.

Foyi cast a glance Vaevi's way to see if she still lived, and looked away only when she saw the bounty hunter struggling to get her hands and knees beneath her. The Zeison Sha rolled to the side, the Force warning her of another of those projectiles of Dark Side energy aimed her way well before it reached her, and in the same motion, she let her discblade fly. The weapon curved from her fingers and up into the air, before descending down upon the head of the closest Felucian, sprinting toward her and waving its crude bone weapon only meters from her. The discblade's spinning edges sliced down through the Felucian's wildly waving tendrils and bisected its face before savagely tearing itself free and flying back to her waiting hand in response to her telekinetic call, and the native, already dead, continued to move forward by momentum alone, its body flopping limply in a pile of sludge before the Twi'lek's feet.

Rayf left her side at the same time she was cutting down the Felucian Warrior, sprinting across the ground with a speed and stride enhanced by the Force, his wan-shen leading. He practically ran headlong into one of the warriors, whereupon there was a flurry of blows that could not be perceived due to their speed, and in less than a second, Rayf was already jumping back and rolling to the side. The warrior he had met was halted in his tracks; he gave a shuddering step forward, hunched over a dozen cuts and stabs in almost every portion of its body that might house a vital organ, and collapsed to the mud. That Felucian was still falling when Rayf swept the feet out from another one, flipping his wan-shen over and above his head and slamming its blade down into the Felucian's chest, nailing the warrior to the ground for a split second. He ripped the polearm free and swung it in a dangerous and hypnotic arc, throwing his entire body into a blinding whirl that caught three Felucians in its sweeping slashes. But one of those warriors, with Force-augmented reaction time, blocked two of those cuts with his skullblade, eliciting a roar of rage and triumph. The second Felucian was a split-second too slow, catching a pair of slashes beneath its mass of tendrils and gaping maw, opening another savage grin upon its throat that vomited blood as it fell face first into the thick mud. The third Felucian was as quick and canny as the first, diverting Rayf's blistering assault with a well-aimed slash of its skullblade, then, as Rayf fell back on his trailing foot to ready himself for a new direction of attacks, thrust a widely-splayed and webbed hand forward. The air warped and groaned, and Rayf was struck in the chest and along the left side with vicious Dark Side energy, throwing him several meters bodily through the air. The Matukai gave a cry of pain and surprise as he attempted to right himself, only to strike the ground on his right shoulder, then flopping in a rough somersault that brought him to his knees, where he remained for precious seconds, gasping against the pain.

Within seconds of the Felucians' initial charge, Foyi was the only one of the trio left standing, but she barely realized her tenuous position as she plunged to the very depths of the Force, ignoring the physical and mental fatigue that continued to affect her and focusing on training and instinct that had been honed into her by her years of experience and practice in the ways of the Zeison Sha. The discblade flashed from her palm, weaving through the air as though it had a mind all its own and passing through the hamstring of the Felucian that had smote Rayf with caustic energy. Even as the dicblade was curving away from her wounded quarry, she reached behind her and pulled the A295 Blaster Rifle from her back, and in the same smooth motion, brought the weapon to her shoulder and triggered a trio of blasts into the same Felucian, who was screeching at its torn muscles as its knees buckled, that screech halting suddenly as it was blown backward. Another Felucian stepped within melee range and aimed a vicious, overhand chop of its skullblade for the Twi'lek's head, but Foyi dodged to the side and used the momentum of that move to flip her blaster rifle around and slam the weapon's stock into the warrior's jaw with enough force to flip him heels over head. A wave of hostility splashed against her consciousness, and Foyi immediately dropped and threw herself into a roll to avoid another slash from behind, made by a warrior she had not seen sneak around behind her, but the Force had intrinsically warned her of his hostile intent. She completed her roll, coming up into a crouch, and jabbed a finger at the skullblade of the Felucian she had just clobbered with her A295. The weapon was still falling through midair when Foyi's telekinetic hold seized it and altered its trajectory, spinning end over end at an upward angle that buried it in the stealthy Felucian's chest.

Foyi, still crouched, swung around at the sound of a bellowing warrior surging toward her from the side, but instead of firing with her blaster rifle, she searched through the Force to find the unique signature of her Force-imbued weapon, and called it to her aid. The discblade rose from where it had dropped across the wreckage of the AT-ST and whirled through the warrior's spine, severing it just above his hips and provoking a truly bloodcurdling scream of shock and agony from the native. Foyi could feel the life energy leaking from her opponent, but tucked herself into a sideways roll as the air groaned and shivered around her, narrowly avoiding another missile of dark energy that had been barreling down upon her. She spun around to spot the source of the savage Force power, only to find the Felucian she was looking for having put on a burst of supernatural speed, closing the gap between them in a nanosecond, his weapon of knobbly and heavy bone swinging inward and upward in a slash meant to split her in two diagonally. Foyi barely deflected the blow with the length of her blaster, but the Felucian had apparently anticipated such a response, and brought a knee into her ribs directly behind its swing. Foyi was flung to the side by the vicious maneuver, feeling the air rush from her lungs in a violent exhale, though the Force continued to strengthen her limbs and keep her focus sharp, even though she could no longer draw oxygen enough to breathe properly. She turned her uncontrolled roll into a somersault, using its momentum to spring to her feet and raise her right hand, telekinetically directing the discblade to rise in the air again and spin in a tempest of death and flecks of blood directly for her opponent's throat.

The Felucian warrior gave a barking growl of what Foyi assumed was defiance, the atmosphere before him twisting in on itself to form a barely-opaque shield of the Force that the discblade could not penetrate, and the weapon was thrown wide. Foyi did not let the failed attack stop her, though, for she was already sprinting across the short distance that separated herself and her opponent. Not bothering to try and fire blaster bolts into the Felucian's shield or maintain her telekinetic grip on the discblade, not even giving herself the chance to draw breath into her aching lungs, Foyi reached into the waters of the Force and made the waves surge about her foe, bodily carrying him forward upon its crest in a Force Pull. The Felucian gave a short squeal of surprise and horror as he was lifted bodily from the ground and hurtled toward the determined and sprinting Twi'lek. Foyi met his airborne form with savage, Force-augmented kick that shattered the Felucian's shield and connected directly with his throat. The Felucian's scream of rage and pain became a strangled gurgle as he was bent backward in midair and slammed to the ground with a splash; Foyi gave him no chance to recover, dropping her blaster and falling upon him with a flurry of punches and jabs aimed directly for his face and head. She viciously slammed her fists into the warrior's face repeatedly, letting the Force give weight and power to her melee assault, which she only relented when her knuckles were smeared with blood and pulpy gore.

Foyi jumped to her feet immediately, spinning a quick circle in search of enemies, but found that of the all the Felucian warriors that had attacked them, none were left standing, either dead or so severely wounded, they could no longer fight, not even with the Dark Side granting them strength. Realizing that the ambush had been foiled, Foyi allowed herself to withdraw from the Force, easing the energy pumping through her body like life-giving waters, like a secondary circulatory system of lifeblood, and gave a ragged gasp as her lungs screamed for air. She was still trying to regain normal breathing when she looked to where she had last seen Rayf, a spike of fear shivering through her as she imagined the worst. But Rayf was already on his feet, albeit leaning heavily upon his wan-shen and using it as a support to keep him upright, and the grin of reassurance he offered her was more of a pain-etched grimace. " _Spast_ , that hurt," he groaned. The Twi'lek rushed to his side, laying a supportive hand on his shoulder, but he waved her off. "I'm fine, sweetheart; I was just surprised, is all. How's Vaevi?"

Foyi turned, still unable to speak as she sucked fetid and moist air through her nostrils, and found the Iktotchi had also regained her feet. Upon closer inspection, Foyi saw multiple minor lacerations and bruises on the bounty hunter's face, as well as superficial tears and rents in her shadowsuit and cloak, but otherwise appeared none the worse for wear. "I only got grazed by...whatever that was," she murmured as she retrieved her E-11s and set about reloading it. "Nice job, by the way. Not sure I could have done better myself."

Foyi let out a shaky exhalation and allowed herself a grin of exhilaration. "Is that a 'thank you' for saving both of you while you took a nap in the mud?"

Whatever Vaevi had intended to say in response was drowned out by a guttural, peeling sound that echoed through the valley and the forest beyond, a sound with a hollow and manufactured quality that made Foyi think it must have been produced by an instrument of some sort. Hurriedly, ignoring the aches in her joints, the pain radiating through her bruised side, and the draining effects of the past week's events, Foyi stooped to pick up her dropped weapons from amongst the strewn corpses. Vaevi craned her neck to look about while Rayf used both his eyes and the Force to determine the nature of any threats in the immediate vicinity.

The awful sound reached a crescendo, and dissipated into the eerie silence again. Vaevi's features took on a fierce grimace, though Foyi could sense her fear as well as she could her own. "That was a war horn," the bounty hunter explained as she slung the sniper rifle over her back. "We need to get moving; there'll be more coming, and in greater numbers."

Foyi gave the Shepherd's trail carved into the mud flats a guilty glance; she hated to leave it, but if there were more Felucians coming specifically to spill their blood, they needed a more defensible position in which to fight, or in order to retreat. "We're too exposed down here."

Vaevi affirmed her observation with a nod. "Let's get back up those cliffs, where we can gain the advantage of both height and sight."

They turned as one to the tiered cliffs and slippery slopes from whence they came, but were taken aback to see those ledges already swarming with Felucians, an entire hunting party that had made not a sound save for the call of the war horn. So steeped in the Dark Side energies of the abused and ill world of Felucia, and so accomplished in their camouflage with their natural environment, both in means mundane and of the Force, that the first of the Felucian Warriors were already reaching the valley's floor before the trio had even spotted them. Arrayed upon the slopes above, many of them clinging to the muddy ascents like Sacorrian grain flies on vertical walls, were more Felucian warriors and scouts, and at the uppermost heights of the walls describing the valley's contours stood two Felucians of unknown importance and biology. They were larger specimens than their comrades, their skin covered in crimson markings, their oblong heads shrouded in grotesque masks and headdresses, clutching large and unwieldy skullblades in one set of hands, the others covered in shields fashioned from carved bone and scales of immense predators. And in between them, rearing and shrieking in rage and hunger, was a rancor, its dark hide glowing with phosphorescent stripes and splashes. Upon its shoulders leaned the largest Jungle Felucian any of them had yet to witness, well over two meters in height with immense musculature outlined by bright yellow markings, his face obscured by a truly impressive and foreboding headdress and mask. With one webbed appendage, he raised a double-ended staff well above his head, while the other set of limbs clutched a shield nearly as massive as the staff. Foyi could feel the Force and the Dark Side swirling like a maelstrom around the rancor-rider, so palpable the atmosphere around him boiled by his mere presence. The rider gave a thunderous, hooting call that echoed through the valley and the forest beyond, and the sound seemed to bolster all the Felucians gathered in the war party. The Felucians began scrabbling down toward the trio, shrieking, howling, and bellowing as they came, blasts of Dark Side energy forming around their webbed fists while they waved their skullblades in lurid threat displays to accompany numbing their war whoops.

"Emperor's Black Bones..." Vaevi exclaimed.

"Run!" Rayf shouted almost simultaneously.

Their only familiar route of escape denied them, they turned tail and fled in the opposite direction, sprinting as fast as they were able, deeper into the valley, zigzagging between small groves of mushrooms, fanged protrusions of bones, and random wreckage protruding from the mud; anything that would provide temporary cover from the blasts of Dark Side energy that sizzled and spattered all around them. Some of these impacted the ground near their feet, sending up explosive splashes of mud, or connecting with stalks of mushrooms that erupted in showers of sticky spores and shreds of fungal material. Foyi's danger sense shrieked in the back of her head, and she ducked in time for one of the Force Blasts to sail directly through the space where her head had been only nanoseconds before, though she focused on continuing to run as fast and as far as she could. The fear inherently motivating her flight, further expounded upon by Felucia's connection to the Dark Side, begged her to draw upon the Force, to either turn upon her enemies and bombard them with the darkest and most savage Force powers she could imagine, or to apply the Force to her legs in enhanced speed that would allow her to cross the valley within moments. But the compassionate and honorable parts of her, the parts that made her the person she wished to be at all times, refused to leave Vaevi behind, who, insensitive to the Force, would be left at the natives' insane wrath.

So they continued to flee, running as quickly as they could as a group, dodging between spots of temporary cover, all sight of the landspeeders' trail left far behind. Foyi cast occasional glances over her shoulder as they ran, and each time, she saw more Felucians joining the chase, seemingly spawned by the shadows themselves as they emerged from spots of cover and ambush to support the war party. Despite the relative sparsity in cover and canopy of mushrooms they experienced as they continued further through the valley's expanse, the clouds grew thick in the sky, blocking most of the morning sun, giving further weight to the darkness and the Dark Side, which seemed to be a palpable beast that hounded their steps as assuredly as the natives did. The terrain features began to change as well, the valley floor sloping before them, the slick mud turning their sprints into combinations of frantic running and sliding as gravity and lack of friction pulled them onward as much as their momentum did. More of the living, calcified protrusions that Rayf had identified as massive teeth were sprouting from the ground, sometimes in apparently random arrangements and fleshy sockets emerging from the mud, other times arrayed in great, curving rows the ends of which disappeared in the distance and shadows. The snarled tangles of fungal growth and bulbous stalks consisted of greater density, but were separated by increasing distances, while the mud was giving way to greater sections of slimy, organic material, whole fields of which stretched between them, puckered infrequently by craters that looked more like ulcers than the marks of explosives, weeping viscous and caustic liquids. Foyi stretched out with her feelings as she gasped for air, uncertain of how long they had been running, or the distance they had covered thus far. The Dark Side continued to twist and pervert her perceptions, and the cluster of wrathful presences denoting the Felucian war party hounding their flight in a chaotic mass behind her, but there was a new presence that seemed to simultaneously surround her from all sides. It was a Force presence that was as complex as it was old, one stricken with pain and simmering with rage that lay just beneath the composition of its surface, as though that wrath had remained there for such a long time, it had become something tangible in its own right, barely contained and yearning for release. If a volcano had a signature in the Living Force, she was certain this was what it would feel like. What was even more concerning was the fact that whatever manner of creature she was sensing, they were running directly above it. Or across it? Were those protrusions truly teeth of some incomprehensibly vast creature?

Foyi did not have to wait long, for their flight took them to the edge of a precipice, a muddy ledge dropping away into a slick slope that fell away into a depression kilometers wide, flanked by tiered slopes of mud and fungal growth. The largest examples of the immense fangs she had been rushing past curved inward to the pit at the bottom of the depression, while random assortments of mushrooms and fungal fronds stubbornly clung to the floor of the basin that consisted of more organic material than mud or stone. The pustules and boils of vile, acidic liquid were scattered everywhere amongst the fangs that grew in concentric circles ringing the pit in the center. In between these protrusions and blemishes of the landscape were the remains of rounded huts and dwellings that had been built both apart from and within the bases of the widest boles of fungi, interspersed amongst the remnants of platforms and prefab structures that incorporated too much durasteel to be a result of the architectural sensibilities of the native populations. Even from the distance at which Foyi first viewed the depression and its central pit, she could see that one of the structures originating from offworld builders had once been a tower of sorts, most likely thrust vertically through the center of the pit, but now leaned heavily to one side, only the uppermost heights of which were barely visible past the mouth of the pit.

For a mouth it was. In the brief, surveying glimpse Foyi was granted at the top of the ridge, she saw the maw of the central pit ringed by smaller but more tightly-knit circles of teeth, all angled inward, many of them gnashing at the remains of the metallic structure having been rammed down its esophagus. Like grotesque mockeries of the jungles surrounding it, the maw was encompassed by abundant tendrils of thick, hoary flesh that glistened with mucus, tentacles that stretched dozens of meters in length, some of which were gripped tightly around the structure submerged in its maw, others splayed out from the center and lying languidly on the organic floor of the depression, while still others waved hypnotically in the air, as though attempting to snatch something out of the sky that dared to fly too close. The Force presence, the boiling rage, the constant pain Foyi had felt all around her and before her was concentrated in that depression, and she could feel the life within that signature of the Force, a life that had long been tortured by unknown circumstances, a life just as affected by the virulent corruption of the Dark Side as anything else on the planet. Whatever it was she was looking at, it was a creature, a creature driven mad far past its nonsentient faculties by years of unrelenting suffering.

Despite the danger they faced, and the war party that had fallen behind, though still doggedly haunting their path, the three of them paused at the clifftop to take in the sight before them. Rayf gave an exhausted gasp, his mouth hanging agape. "Holy sithspawn...it's a _sarlacc_."

Vaevi's shocked gaze flicked between the creature before them and the human. "There's no way that's a sarlacc...it's too damned big to be a sarlacc."

Foyi wanted to ask what a sarlacc was; wanted clarification on what exactly she was looking at. But the eerie horn of the Felucians rang out behind them, followed closely by a chorus of shrieks and ululating warcries, and she realized they were out of time to gawk, much less have a discussion as to the reality of what they were seeing. She began to propel herself over the cliff edge and slide down the muddy slope, yelling behind her, "Come on! We have to keep moving!"

"We can't go down _there_!" Vaevi replied, her tone suggesting she thought the Twi'lek had lost her mind.

"We can't stay up here!" Rayf supplied for Foyi, looking back over his shoulder, to see the first Felucian Scouts emerging from the haze and darkness behind them. He similarly vaulted over the cliff ledge and began sliding down the slope. After only a moment's hesitation, Vaevi followed, whereupon all three let gravity and the lack of friction expedite their descent into the depression and the sarlacc waiting beyond.


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Despite the lack of funding provided the Imperial garrison situated in the ruins of Kway Teow, the small bunker that served as the command center for the Galactic Empire's interests in this untamed, wartorn wilderness was delightfully neat and orderly. It was not a large complex, but was sufficiently sizable to house the handful of squads of stormtroopers, both noncommission and specialized units, and their commanding officers. Additionally, there was enough room for small power generators, a cramped but well-stocked armory, and a hangar that could have housed well over a dozen repulsorcraft, though it was sparsely occupied now. Standing in the bunker's command center, poring over files and data meticulously compiled on the terminal before her, the Devaronian representative of the Inquisitorius cultivated the impression that this had once been an outpost, a single node in an entire network comprising a strong Imperial presence on Felucia. Her eyes skimmed over lines of Aurebesh text detailing the results of surveys and reconnaissance into the unexplored parts of the jungle, the daily activities of personnel who were long gone, most of whom had been reassigned to other, more vital operations across the galaxy. In fact, Felucia had once been of great concern to certain proponents within the Empire, the subject of extensive attempts to utilize the unique physiology and natural Force abilities of the native population, resulting in a battery of failed experiments led by one Captain Vischera, who had been assigned command of a secret internment facility established on the world shortly after the emergence of the New Order. Apparently, he had decided to spend his spare time studying captured Felucians and subjecting the specimens to barely-controlled genetic mutations, though the results of his unsanctioned activities and the data he must have collected had been fouled by an unknown group of assailants, who were not only responsible for infiltrating and destroying the old prison facility, but were also suspected of having been sympathizers to early attempts at organization of the Rebel Alliance that grew as a threat to the Empire daily. Vischera's projects and the prison he commanded had eventually been abandoned, and whatever information was left regarding them had been buried under the overpowering weight of planetary surveys, sensor data, and records of meaningless minutiae of those who were stationed on Felucia over the course of the years that followed.

Only in the last few years had Felucia become interesting again to someone with her particular mandates. The records she found regarding the incidents over two years ago were incomplete, due to the lack of information and understanding of those who had compiled it, though there were numerous mentions of Jedi who had escaped the Purge and Palpatine's notice having taken refuge upon this world. Scrutinizing these records with more intensity than she had those already viewed, the Inquisitor was sorely disappointed by what she read, for little was actually said regarding the events that led to the demise of these renegade Jedi and no small number of Imperial troops, settlers, and natives who had happened to fall within the crossfire between the Jedi and an unknown individual who had displayed remarkable abilities, well beyond any recorded amongst the Jedi or any Force-using tradition the Inquisitor had studied or personally assisted in decimating. From what she could glean from the half-finished reports and scattered, unclear sightings, whomever this individual had been, they had been present on Felucia more than once, and seemed to be at the epicenter of whatever had caused such a dramatic shift in the planet's ecosystems, the delicious quagmire of the Dark Side that the entirety of the world appeared to have mired itself in. Though she was without details or specifics, the Imperial presence on the world had been reduced and weakened, and when funding for the erstwhile garrison, research projects, and failed experiments had been rerouted to other Imperial efforts to combat the threat of the Rebel scum and their ilk rising from every slagheap and mynock den in the galaxy, those left had been unable to do little more than conduct token efforts on behalf of the Empire they so loyally served. What little artillery, forces, and weaponry specially assigned to the planet for the garrison's use had been further diminished when they had become involved in a short but heated skirmish between proponents of two criminal syndicates, the Zann Consortium and the Hutt Cartel. The results of this battle had been inconclusive, though in her estimation, the Empire had received the raw end of the deal, left with the cleanup and the destruction afterward. Though the infamous Tyber Zann had been captured, the symbolic recompense for the Empire that this had garnered had been short-lived, as Zann's compatriots had liberated him from imprisonment in the spice mines of Kessel.

Thus, Imperial interests in the troublesome Felucia had waned, for little had been gained by establishing a well-equipped garrison upon the world, or previous efforts to study, and then eradicate, the natives of the Felucian jungles. Thus was she faced with the sorry state of affairs at the bunker, though even she had to admit—personally, if not publicly—that the lieutenant in command had done his best with the situation presented him. He was also well-accustomed to following orders, for as of yet, he had not been hovering about in order to pounce upon any opportunity to impress her in an attempt to curry favor, that he might be transferred off this backwater and to a post with more excitement and greater probability of vertical career movement. Yet he had remained within easy access, never far enough away that he could not be summoned to her side at a moment's notice.

Despite all of these qualities, the lieutenant still had an annoying habit on intruding upon her sanctity of thought and research, as he decided to do at that very moment. The thin man, who seemed to be perpetually perspiring, despite the climate controls within the bunker, was suddenly at her side. The Inquisitor silently berated herself for being too focused upon the screen in front of her to keep an extrasensory "eye" on her immediate surroundings. He opened his mouth to speak, but the glare she leveled his way, cold and full of menace, made him snap his jaw shut and adopt a smart, attentive stance. The Devaronian gave a sigh. "What is it, Lieutenant?"

"Inquisitor," he began, his voice shuddering slightly before he mastered it again. "We have finished repairs with what was on hand. The A5 is not truly restored, but it should function properly in a combat scenario, as you requested. We merely await your inspection."

The Devaronian stepped back from the console, straightening the hems of her zeyd-cloth robes and absentmindedly touching the Taozin amulet that hung at her throat. "Lead the way." She followed the officer's quick, determined steps through the cramped halls and chambers of the bunker, and down a short flight of stairs where no one had bothered to spend the time nor credits to install a turbolift. The stairs ended in a door that slid upward at their approach, issuing the pair into the small hangar that predominantly housed parts and pieces of repulsorcraft the garrison no longer had access to, several small refueling pumps, and the old but imposing piece of machinery that dominated the majority of the hangar's space. It was a HAVw A5 Juggernaut, a relic of the Clone Wars that had become a powerful and versatile mobile artillery platform for the Empire in the wake of the Old Republic's dissolution, though the widespread use of these vehicles had diminished over the intervening period, particularly after the introduction of the more advanced AT-AT and AT-ST walkers that saw greater use in modern times, while requiring a fraction of the routine maintenance that an A5 Juggernaut commanded. Walkers had been deployed multiple times when Imperial forces were prevalent on Felucia, but the Juggernaut was the only form of heavy artillery left available to the paltry garrison. But if the terrain to which the Inquisitor was directing them was as treacherous and tangled as the lieutenant claimed it to be, then she preferred the machinery available to walkers, for despite its idiosyncracies and age, a Juggernaut tank possessed greater stability than the tall, gangly legs of Imperial walkers. The vehicle before her was almost twenty-two meters in length and ten in height, with an observation tower that increased that by another five. Its bulky, heavily-armored body squatted upon five sets of enormous wheels, and a fully-functional cockpit graced both ends of the vehicle to allow it to be driven in either direction with little trouble, as the vessel was hardly maneuverable when forced to make a turn. This close to its pitted, scarred, and carbon-scored hull, the Inquisitor could see similar design elements that eventually gave birth to the look and construction of the AT-AT walker. Its impressive array of armaments consisted of turrets mounted above the forward cockpit and along the center of the dorsal spine, while heavy laser cannons emerged from both the starboard and port sides, facing toward the rear of the vehicle, but able to cover the fir arcs to either side of the Juggernaut. As she approached beside the lieutenant's side, the technicians who had been working doggedly at repairs in order to make the vehicle useful for her scouting missions she intended to pierce deep into the heart of the jungles snapped to attention. She gave a dispassionate wave of her hand, and the tech specialists returned to their assigned tasks at a nod from the lieutenant.

The pair of them walked around the Juggernaut's perimeter, while the lieutenant explained the combat readiness and effectiveness of the artillery vessel in clipped, encyclopedic tones. "This is the last of the heavy artillery we have available to us, and though the A5 has given us routine issues regarding its maintenance and replacement parts, we have been able to make do with what we have available to scavenge and jury-rig as need be." He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial tone. "As you might imagine, requisitions for supplies are often met with long delays or simple silence from Command this far from Imperial Center, so we get by how we can. Our Juggernaut was actually damaged in one of our last forays into the jungles, and my men have been repairing it ever since. Your arrival was most prodigious, for with the _Rimfire_ 's command crew, my technicians were granted the right amount of help, extra supplies, and technical knowledge to restore the Juggernaut to combat effectiveness." He gestured up at one of the side-mounted laser cannons, and the lights surrounding his form shifted toward a muddy gray with frustration and sadness. "All the laser batteries are operational, though at lesser capacity than is recommended, due to poor power regulation in the A5's core, and the lack of sufficient tibanna gas canisters. We can fire the cannons, Inquisitor, but do not expect full barrages, or many shots. The gunners will have to be accurate and conservative."

"As I expect them to be," the Inquisitor replied with a barely-perceptible undertone of hostility.

"Of course, Inquisitor," the lieutenant replied, new beads of sweat emerging around his collar, which was already grimy with perspiration. "I'm happy to inform you though that the pair of Mk 2/W Concussion Grenade Launchers are fully-operational, with a full complement of anti-personnel and anti-armor concussion grenades. The anti-personnel explosives are sonic-based, so we may use them to stun and capture large groups of the natives...if that is truly still your wish, Inquisitor?"

The Devaronian gave a brief nod. "I believe I warned you against asking unwarranted questions, Lieutenant." She waited for him to cringe, for his presence in the Force to exude delicious waves of black fear upon which she was momentarily sustained and strengthened. "Though your intuition serves you well...the Inquisitorius has read your reports of the Jungle Felucians' supernatural abilities, and we agree with you: you are overmatched, and incapable of accomplishing the Empire's goals here without help. Hence, my presence." She gestured up at the ports where the retracted grenade launchers were hidden. "Your attention to detail and ability to anticipate the needs of your betters shall serve you well."

Now the officer's aura was streaked with blue waves of hope, born of the thought that he might have gained her approval, and therefore an opportunity to advance within the Imperial Army's hierarchy, and finally be assigned to a post where he most certainly considered his talents fully utilized and appreciated. These splashes of hope, like wet pigment splattered across the canvas of his simmering fear, were something the Inquisitor cherished even more than the wavelengths of unadulterated fear. For hope would build in this mind and his spirit, until he realized, either by her direct actions or her lack of actions for his benefit, that his hope was false, and would shatter into true despair, which was even more savory to the Devaronian than the lieutenant's fear.

The blue stripes of hope colored slightly yellow with eagerness, and the lieutenant hurried his pace, completing the circuit of the impressive vessel and striding toward the opposite wall of the hangar. There was an alcove there, wide enough to accommodate two humanoids abreast and tall enough to house another pair of sentients stacked upon each other; ensconced in this alcove was a hefty, nightmarish version of a stormtrooper, modeled in a style akin to the Inquisitorium Dark Troopers that had accompanied her, though the severe scarring and grime upon the figure revealed its age and experience in combat. The Inquisitor recognized it as a Purge Trooper, an early product of the Dark Trooper Project that had been designed specifically to combat Force-users who had escaped the initial violence of the Jedi rebellion and the subsequent Purge and corruption of Force-sensitives across the galaxy. Multiple Purge Troopers had been deployed in the days of greater Imperial presence on Felucia, and had shown great prowess in dealing with the Jungle Felucians and their primitive and powerful connections with the Force. Though as with most of the problems experienced by Imperial interests on the planet, the majority of the Purge Troopers assigned here had been destroyed by the same Force-wielder who had ripped through much of the jungle like a supernatural tempest. Seeing a Purge Trooper that, albeit having suffered damage in the past, was still in one piece, was a genuine surprise for her. She gave the lieutenant a curious glance. "Is it functional?"

The lieutenant only barely kept the grin of triumph off his face. "Indeed, Inquisitor; we have your command crew's expertise and spare parts to thank once again." He walked up to the towering droid and triggered its activation sequence. There was a throaty, digitized sound as the droid became aware of its surroundings, and with ponderous steps, walked from the deep alcove, keeping its arms stiff at its sides as it came to attention before the two of them. The Inquisitor examined the equipment on its left forearm that would project an energy blade meant for both cutting and stunning, as well as a localized shield that would deflect most attacks from energy weapons. A shoulder-mounted rocket launcher with a trio of tubes protruded from its hulking right shoulder, able to swivel enough to target most enemies up to medium range arrayed before it; the main disadvantage of the Purge Trooper models were their extreme weight and the lax speed with which they moved, but these were resultant of the heavy armor of thick duranium and refined cortosis, which was nearly impervious to blasters and highly resilient against lightsabers, the favored weapon of the long-dead Jedi.

As the Purge Trooper stood still, awaiting new orders, the Inquisitor faced the lieutenant again. "This will do splendidly, Lieutenant. Have the droid loaded onto the Juggernaut, and ready as many men as you are able. I wish to penetrate the darkest parts of the jungle you have thus far feared to enter by the morning...and there had best be as many powerful natives as you claim there for capture and study."

The lieutenant was unable to hide his terror at the thought of proceeding so deep into the jungles he loathed. He waved at the Purge Trooper, which began striding toward the Juggernaut, making not a sound save for the echoing, immense clomping of its footsteps. "What are our rules of engagement, Inquisitor?"

"We are going to capture any Felucians we are able to," she explained. "I only need three or so, or just one or two if we can incapacitate one of their Shamans; from all your reports, they appear to be the strongest in the Force. All others who dare to get in our way are to be cut down on sight. This will be a simple smash and grab, Lieutenant. I didn't come here to embroil either of our forces and resources in a ground war or a battle of attrition. And our mandate is no longer the eradication of this species; we acquire a specimen, and then we leave. If our enemies try to stop us, you have full license to use any and every asset at our disposal, but I want at least one _alive_. Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant?"

"Perfectly, ma—Inquisitor."

"Excellent," came her response. "Make preparations for departure. I will retrieve my troops and meet you here, and then...we shall go hunting."

* * *

The Felucian war party poured over the uppermost cliff edge like a tide of pure rage, hatred, and bloodlust, howling, barking, and hurling sickly waves and spheres of Force energy down the muddy slopes. The Dark Side powers they wielded splashed and spattered the mud all around their prey, Foyi, Rayf, and Vaevi gasping as they continued to leap, slide, tumble, and sprint down the mud-slicked slopes and the alternating ledges. They were dodging and weaving through a veritable forest of the sarlacc's teeth, its wounded, wrathful presence growing so strong about them, it was nearly suffocating in its proximity. Foyi was finding it difficult to breathe, through the spores, humidity, and rising heat of the day, as well as the tempestuous presence of the Dark Side itself, which only seemed to be growing the closer they came to the mouth of the sarlacc. She had the impression that this was not just another place negatively affected and twisted by the Dark Side, but rather a location where much death, destruction, fear, and hatred had existed for a long time, perhaps even before the wound that had inevitably corrupted the entirety of the planet. She could see that the immense object that emerged from the sarlacc's maw was indeed a tower of sorts, and judging by the dark and spartan architecture, the way gargantuan, jointed legs curved up from the tower's sides like the curled appendages of a deceased Nadir spider, she guessed it had been Imperial in origin. Who else would go to so much trouble for an unknown reason at the expense of the creature before her?

The deeper they ran into the depression and the closer they came to the sarlacc's maw, the more remnants of native architecture and abodes became present. In fact, some of them appeared to have been fashioned recently, and continued to be utilized, judging by the number of twisted, wrathful Felucians that continued to erupt from their dark doorways. The three of them, already possessing considerable momentum from their previous sprint and the gravitational pull of Felucia on the slippery slopes, managed to stay ahead of those who joined the pursuit. Foyi did her best to slow them down, flicking her fingers at nearby boulders and crumbled shards of ruins to hurtle behind them, guided by the Force to trip up the thick, churning legs of the warriors or smash unceremoniously into their chests. But such tactics only delayed the inevitable, and failed to deter the main war party from their intended violence.

They finally came to the bottom of the depression, a wide, flat area of mud and heaving, organic matter, interspersed with bubbling boils and ulcers indicating the sarlacc's poor state of health. The sarlacc seemed to respond to their approach, for it gave a strangled squeal that reverberated through the ground and echoed amongst the mushrooms. Foyi wanted to cover her ears at the sound of its pathetic, high-pitched wails, but she instead occupied her hands with her discblade, turning about to face the oncoming rush of the hoard of Darksiders bearing down upon them. "There's nowhere else to run! We either fight, or we die!"

Vaevi pulled her ACP Scatter Gun, a look somewhere between excitement and blood-chilling fear crossing her face. "Fight with a sarlacc at my back is not my idea of a defensible position!"

As if to accentuate her worries, the sarlacc gave another shriek as one of it tentacles, nearly a kilometer long, writhed from its maw and slammed the fleshy ground within meters of where they stood. The three of them jumped, and scurried to the side, taking cover amongst a cluster of tumbled and ruined edifices built by the Jungle Felucians and long since abandoned. The tentacle sliced the air in a great rush that seemed to bisect the atmosphere itself, but it was long belated, and did not come close to sweeping them aside, or grasping them in its horrid grip. Foyi could feel its agitation at the number of creatures rushing across its expanse and gathering within reach of its maw. It wished to strike out at anyone and anything that dared to come too close to its mouth, to exact primal vengeance upon the small creatures that it believed had hurt it so in the past, and was the source of its continual suffering due to the cruel, metal structure shoved down its esophagus. And upon feeling that, Foyi had an idea; one that was insane and likely to end in their deaths, but if they did not react swiftly and in tandem, the Felucians would overwhelm them and rend them limb from limb.

The Zeison Sha emerged from the doorway she had commandeered as cover, and renewed her sprint out of the collection of ruins, heading directly for the sarlacc's waving tendrils. Rayf shouted after her, but blindly followed her charge, even if he did not fully understand the reasoning behind it. Vaevi, not wishing to be overrun by staying in one spot alone, joined them, shouting angrily, " _What_ are you spiceheads doing?!"

The tentacles ahead of them began rising into the air, the sarlacc sensing their approach via the vibrations their frantic footfalls produced. Foyi did not look back at the bounty hunter, but shouted, "That thing's trying to grab anything that gets too close to its mouth! If we stay within reach of its tentacles, the Felucians will be forced to get close too, and maybe the sarlacc will do some of the fighting for us!"

"That sarlacc's going to eat us in the process!" Vaevi gasped back.

"It's worth a shot!" Rayf added as he scrambled to his hands and knees for a moment, the tip of a tentacle sweeping toward where his face had been a nanosecond before. He sprang to his feet again, running as fast as he was able without directly calling on the Force, and still appearing to possess enough stamina to run in such a way for the rest of the day. His wan-shen flashed by his arm, cutting a deep groove in another tentacle that darted within centimeters of him. The sarlacc bellowed in response.

"Get closer!" Foyi encouraged, dodging past the same wounded tentacle, which was waving about uncontrollably and spraying gobs of viscous ichor.

Vaevi leapt over a tentacle that lay across her path, triggering a burst from the ACP as she did so; the tentacle slid away sharply, and the sarlacc bellowed again. "I've got a bad feeling about this!"

"Save it for your logs!" Rayf snapped.

Even as the three of them drew closer to the sarlacc's mouth, the tentacles began thrashing and slamming the ground all around them, splashing gouts of mud and bursting caustic boils in its rage. The first of the Felucians entered the depression and sprinted toward their quarry, so ravenously focused upon their foes most of them ignored the tentacles suddenly waving and spiraling down upon them. Foyi watched in a mixture of glee and horror as one of those tentacles swept in from the side like a starfighter on a bombing run, flinging almost half a dozen Felucians bodily in the air. One Felucian called upon the Force to cling to that tentacle and ride the savage wave through the air, only for the tentacle to suddenly wrap about the warrior and crush him. Foyi heard the crack of bones and squelch of ruptured organs, and turned away in time to avoid the thick, hoary base of one of those tentacles nearly falling atop her with the force of a comet. She danced in between three appendages striking and slithering across the slimy ground, then heard an ear-shattering roar of pain and fear as one of the largest of the tentacles snaked forward and seized a rancor around its waist, the end of the tendril snugging closely about the predator's throat. The yellow-plumed Chieftain astride the rancor was knocked from his perch and plummeted to the ground with a roar of rage, while the rancor was dragged bodily across the ground. The unfortunate beast squealed pitifully, as though pleading for help, its claws trying to find purchase on the frictionless ground. With a final, keening roar, the rancor was yanked out of sight by the immense sarlacc, mashing its body against the half-digested structure rammed down its throat as it greedily shoved the rancor into its gullet. It must have succeeded, for the sarlacc gave a tremendous belch like thunder, and began thrashing anew, seeking new prey and continual food.

Rayf stabbed the blunt end of his wan-shen in the ground and used it to vault over one tentacle lashing toward him, then set himself in a horizontal spin midair that kept him mere centimeters beneath the anticipated swing of a second tendril. Vaevi ducked beneath the sweep of that tentacle, dropping to one knee and bracing the ACP Scatter Gun against her shoulder, triggering two bursts into a pair of Felucian Warriors who approached her. One caught the blast on a shield of Force energy, but the second instinctively tried to block with his skullblade, only for the perimeter of the spreading shots of energy to bypass his blade and burn through his face and abdomen. The first Felucian gave a war whoop and leaped into the air to bring its club-like weapon of bone upon the Iktotchi's head, but one of the tentacles snatched the Felucian deftly from the midst of his leap and just as swiftly plopped his form into the waiting maw. Running low on ammunition, and with no time to reload due to constant dodging and sidestepping of both sarlacc and Felucians, the bounty hunter slung the weapon over her back and whipped her C-10 Heavy Blaster Pistol from its sheathe. She had only time enough to draw the weapon, though, when one of the tentacles whizzed past her head, its bulk barely grazing her left horn, but the momentary contact was enough to flip her over. And as she fell, she began sliding down the mucus-covered slope, flailing and shrieking in denial as she inexorably tumbled toward the sarlacc's maw.

Foyi leapt over another tendril, and while in air, struck out with a Force-augmented kick to connect with a Felucian Scout and send him flipping webbed feet over head. She landed on the same slope, breathing hard but calling upon the Force for strength. She threw a current of intent toward Rayf at the same time she whipped her discblade over her shoulder, where it curved midair and descended toward his head. He registered her intention with mental acknowledgment, trusting in the Force as he similarly threw his wan-shen to her with one hand, the other reaching up to snatch the discblade out of the air and bear down upon a pair of Felucians.

Foyi, still sliding toward the sarlacc's maw, focused on the rolling bounty hunter, who had nearly reached the inner lips of the enormous creature. She could feel the wan-shen in her hand before it ever drew close to her, and so she was ready when it slapped into her palm. She flipped it over, reversing the blade to point downward, whereupon she jabbed it deep into the sarlacc's flesh and arrested her own tumble. No longer in danger of sliding into the sarlacc, she braced her body against the upright wan-shen, then stabbed her hand forward, palm facing toward the bounty hunter as she _willed_ the arrest of the Iktotchi's momentum.

And Vaevi did; caught in the Twi'lek's Force Grip, she stopped mere centimeters from the teeth that marked the innermost edge of the sarlacc's maw, giving a small yelp as she realized she had lost full control over her own motions. Foyi anchored her feet upon the mucus-lined slope and pulled her arm sharply back, and with another surprised shriek, Vaevi went soaring up and over the lip of the pit, back onto the mud and flesh that surrounded the sarlacc's central mouth. Foyi, not allowing herself to rest or become a stationary target for the sarlacc's hunger, pushed off with her feet and propelled herself skyward as well. She caught a glimpse of Vaevi landing and tumbling about, narrowly avoiding a cluster of tentacles that slammed all about her. One of those tentacles rose to meet the Twi'lek as gravity pulled her downward, and her foot caught the edge of one of those tendrils, where she pushed off again in a Force-enhance leap that carried her to Vaevi's side. She had barely landed when her eyes found Rayf, who was a whirlwind of fists and feet, using her discblade as a melee weapon encircling his right fist as he struck one Felucian warrior after the other, shattering bones and slashing deep lacerations into their bodies before moving on to the next in an unstoppable, furious train of controlled and precise violence. His flurry of Force-augmented martial arts was carrying him inexorably toward one of the larger Felucians with red stripes, who was guarded by a quartet of Scouts and waved his arms in dramatic and arcane gestures, calling upon the Force to make it boil and twist around his person, as well as bolster the Felucians adhering close to him. Foyi sent another splash of mental intent toward Rayf as she reared back and hurled the wan-shen like a spear; the polearm flew almost completely straight, passing Rayf's shoulder close enough to draw his notice, before whipping between two Felucian Scouts and burying its bladed end into the Shaman's sternum. The Shaman gave a surprised grunt, then fell backward in the mud, the air around him no longer shivering as his life left his dying body. The Scouts who had surrounded him were suddenly bereft of the rage and power through the Force that they had relied upon in the past few moments, and abruptly scattered as the sarlacc's tentacles began converging on their position.

"We can't stay here!" Vaevi shouted, ducking back and forth as she made wild pot shots with her Heavy Blaster Pistol. The sarlacc was in a frenzy now, and there were so many tentacles and Felucians whipping about in the immediate vicinity, it was becoming difficult for Foyi to anticipate any attacks or dodges, for her danger sense was screaming in her consciousness almost incessantly. She sidestepped a slash from a Felucian skullblade, and since she did not have any weapons in her hands at the moment, she thrust her palm forward and gave the Warrior a Force shove that sent him tumbling backward down the mucus-covered slope, whereupon he rolled over the lip of the sarlacc and into the depths of its gullet. She turned at the sound of a blaster shot, and saw another Felucian crumpling, his limp form flung to the side languidly by the flailing of a sarlacc tentacle. Vaevi, obviously still shaken by coming within centimeters of being eaten, was nevertheless keeping her cool as she stuck close to Foyi's side, her heavy blaster pistol in hand. She was doing her best to keep moving, to anticipate the Force-based and melee attacks of the Felucians, and the striking tentacles of the sarlacc, but she was well out of her element now, and she knew it.

Foyi was not certain she was not about to be overwhelmed herself. She whirled around, aiming a kick for another Felucian who approached too close. The Felucian sprawled in the mud, whereupon Vaevi shot him in the face. The Twi'lek turned to Rayf, who had reached the body of the speared Shaman and was yanking his wan-shen from the corpse in his free hand all in one smooth motion, whipping about and bringing both wan-shen and discblade to bear on a pair of Felucians who rushed him with their skullblades held aloft, shrieking their rage. In his left hand, the wan-shen stabbed three times and ended with a slash to one Felucian's throat, flipping him end over end, dead before he hit the ground. At the same moment, he let the Felucian Warrior on his right side charge within arms reach, at which point his right hand, still gripping Foyi's discblade, swept in from the side, then upward in a wide, slashing motion, opening a dark, gushing wound from the Felucian's sternum to throat. Both bodies were still falling to the ground when he pirouetted away, landing on the ball of his left foot as he swung around and caught another Felucian Shaman with the exaggerated reach of his polearm. Or rather, he tried to, but the red-striped Shaman gave a bellow as he unleashed a blast of Force energy that impacted Rayf and sent him spinning bodily through the air. The human slammed against one of the airborne tentacles with a grunt, then tumbled to the ground, where he struggled to get up, even as the Shaman raised his shield and hefty, wickedly-jagged skullblade, putting on a burst of Force speed to close the distance between himself and Rayf. His weapon stabbed down at the Matukai Adept, but centimeters from stabbing deep into his ribs, the skullblade was halted by Foyi's Force Grip. The Shaman turned to the Zeison Sha Warrior with a dark gleam in his eyes and the Dark Side wreathing his form, only for Rayf to find his feet again and stab him up and under the primary arm with his wan-shen. The Shaman gave a gasping, wheezing cough and slid off the polearm as Rayf yanked it free of his flesh, spinning the weapon around him as his right hand released the discblade, the momentum and spin he put on it whipping it through the air toward its true owner.

Foyi snatched the discblade from the air, then took a grip of Vaevi's shoulder and urged her to run, keeping her hand in contact with the bounty hunter so that she might direct her ally's movements in time to avoid the sarlacc's tentacles and Force Blasts of the Felucians. The noise of the frenetic melee, the roars of rancors and squeals of the hungry sarlacc, were deafening and bewildering, Tentacles slapped and slipped across the ground before them, forcing both Twi'lek and Iktotchi to sidestep, leap, and roll as they closed the distance between themselves and Rayf. A Felucian rose before them, blocking their path, but was swept away by the enraged sarlacc before he could act. A tentacle struck the ground a few meters away, and began slashing the mud toward them, but it was deterred when Rayf approached its other side and gave it several, lightning-fast chops as means of discouragement. Within moments, the trio were by each other once more, trying to move as one as they retreated from the sarlacc's proximity, allowing what was left of the dozens of Felucians to contend with the tentacles assaulting and grabbing at them.

"We need to get out of this hellhole!" Vaevi exclaimed. "Get to higher ground, and try to lose any that escape the sarlacc's reach in the jungles!"

Rayf pushed the bounty hunter aside as the tip of a tendril whipped past her head; a brief stab from his wan-shen dissuaded it from further assaults. He pointed up several ledges and tiered slopes surrounding the depression they were in on the opposite side of the valley from whence they had descended, where slopes that were gradual enough to serve as useful ramps were thick with fungal vegetation, and therefore cover they could take from the Felucians. "Up there!" he indicated with an accompanying shout to his pointing finger.

Without another word, they sprinted for the opposite side of the valley, skirting the upper rows of the sarlacc's teeth and narrowly avoiding the slashing, pounding tentacles that swept in at them from all sides, or hurtled down upon them from above. There were still several Felucians pursuing them, but most of them were having a great deal of trouble navigating the deadly strikes of the sarlacc's appendages. One Felucian gave a barking cry as it was caught beneath one of those tendrils, mashing it to a pulp that spattered across the muddy, mucus-slicked ground. Another was caught within the coils of a tentacle, and pulled shrieking within the sarlacc's maw. Foyi could feel the shiver of primal pleasure in her very bones as the sarlacc consumed its meal, and she was certain that if she was not sickened by pure exhaustion from all the running and fighting, she would be by the sarlacc's intense and wrathful presence in the Force.

Their run took them further from the sarlacc as they gained more distance from what few Felucians were not so preoccupied with the sarlacc's feeding frenzy they continued to chase down their offworlder prey. Projectiles of dark Force energy skittered across the ground beside their feet or rocketed over their heads, the debris the Force Blasts inevitably picked up in their wakes buffeting them but inflicting nothing more serious than bruises and minor cuts. The sarlacc's tentacles took some of these blows, which caused severe burns and grievous wounds upon the rough and slimy hide of the sarlacc's appendages, and elicited groans and wails from the creature that only prompted frantic attacks upon the sentients that dared to disturb and abuse it.

Despite the zigzagging path they took, backtracking, leaping, and ducking as necessary, Foyi, Vaevi, and Rayf finally drew to the terminus of the sarlacc's reach, where the base of the muddy slopes began to climb up to the tiered cliffs, eventually leading to the upper portions of the jungle and cliff walls above. The handful of Felucians that had been pursuing them had either been destroyed by the sarlacc's appendages, or were actively in battle with the monstrosity, calling upon the Force furiously to defend themselves and inflict attacks born of the Dark Side upon the raging creature. Rayf made it to the first slope, his long legs pumping and carrying him in swift, smooth motions as he maintained full, metaphysical control of his body. Vaevi came right behind, gasping for air but refusing to stop, still clutching her heavy blaster pistol as though her life depended upon it. Foyi brought up the rear, keeping her discblade in hand and ready to throw at any threats that may emerge from the jungle ahead and above them.

The bounty hunter glanced back over her shoulder as she ran, checking to make certain Foyi was still behind her, as well as the position of the Felucians in regards to their small group. "I think that worked! They're being kept busy by that sarlacc!"

"Son of a Hutt!" Rayf exclaimed up ahead, immediately after cresting the lip of a ledge several meters above and ahead of both Iktotchi and Twi'lek. His curse demanded their attention, and they slowed as their eyes found the same sight that had halted Rayf in his tracks. For they were not alone on the slopes that they wished to use for escape and concealment, as another threat had appeared, trundling down the slope they were presently climbing with a roar of engines and the machinery of war. A monstrosity of armored duranium and ominous laser cannons was charging down the slope toward them, crashing through and over thick strands of mushrooms, cutting them down in slabs of fungal meat and sprays of adhesive spores. Foyi had not the slightest idea what she was looking at, but it reminded her of one of the immense All Terrain Armored Transports, the Imperial walkers that were so feared on any world unlucky enough to suffer the wrath of the Galactic Empire. But this machine had some sort of turret atop its cockpit, a sensors tower rising high above its dorsal plating, and enormous wheels of durasteel that would turn anyone unfortunate enough to be run down by them into a bloody smear across the landscape. The vehicle was barreling down the slope at an alarming speed, growing larger and louder as it hurtled toward the fleeing trio.

"The Empire's found us," Vaevi lamented as they realized how entrapped they had become. "I told you I had a bad feeling about this."

The three of them dodged to the side, scrambling along the edges of the slope as the vehicle came hurtling past, heading toward the depression in the center of the valley and the battle being waged between the sarlacc's tentacles and the Felucians below. The trio continued running, skirting the edge of the devastation wrought by the Imperial tank as it carved a course down the slope through the treacherous mud and ruined stalks of fungi, hoping that the Imperial patrol, if that was all it was, would be more intrigued by the frenzied Felucian war party and the immense sarlacc than the trio of offworlders simply trying to stay out of the way. But Foyi glanced back over her shoulder as her frenetic flight continued to carry her up the slope, and she was dismayed to see that the tank was slowing to a sudden halt, an impressive feat for a vessel of its size on such a steep and slippery grade. For a moment, she hoped that the vehicle's forward momentum and gravity would prevent it from stopping so abruptly, but the weight of the vehicle was in its favor, grinding its wheels into the soft mud to catch upon the durable flesh of the sarlacc below, bringing its rapid descent to a halt with loud protests of the servos and engines driving its humongous wheels. A pair of Felucian Warriors, several meters below, took notice of the Imperial tank and hurled Force blasts at it, which had little effect on its thick hull plating save for deep scars and carbon scoring, though it did draw the attention of the Imperial gunners within; the laser cannon affixed to the front cockpit swiveled to take aim and opened fire with a short salvo of laserfire that lit up the entire valley with its lurid, crimson glow. The blasts struck the ground directly at the Felucians' feet and practically disintegrated them, reducing them to little more than tangled limbs and flesh burned and melted into the ground beneath them. Meanwhile, the Imperial vehicle began moving again, backing up the slope it had just bounced down, though upon realizing it had a cockpit at both ends, Foyi had to wonder if it truly had a front and rear end. From hatches arrayed around the enormous turret atop the vessel's spine emerged new turrets, only these had been configured with wider barrels for launching large projectiles. Foyi was about to call out a warning, but with the cacophony that echoed through the valley, it was unlikely she would be heard anyway, and not in time for her companions to be made aware of the projectiles suddenly speeding toward them. Foyi reached out in the Force to try to redirect them, but she could not muster enough focus to catch all of them in her metaphysical regard, and one of the grenades exploded a few meters away, impacting the ridge they had been clambering atop of and hurling mud and spores everywhere. What the explosive produced was not the expected fire and shrapnel, but rather an expanding radius of the most high-pitched and overwhelming sounds she had ever heard, forming a wall of sonic waves that seemed to strike every cell of her being simultaneously. Foyi's coherent thoughts shattered, her hold on the Force suddenly relinquished as, for an agonizing moment, she forgot entirely who she was, where she was, and what she was doing.

The Twi'lek, human, and Iktotchi all fell to the concussive blasts of the sonic grenade, which hurled them from their feet and sent them sprawling. Foyi lost control over her limbs and went tumbling back down the slope, sliding through mud and rolling over fallen mushroom stalks before coming to a halt when she caught against one of the sarlacc's teeth protruding from the soft ground. Rayf fell into her, his spine impacting her abdomen painfully, knocking the wind from her lungs, though she barely noticed as she tried to regain her bearings, only to find that it was as though a veil had been cast upon her entire existence. It was worse than the stun blast she had taken back on Point Nadir, for she was awake for the discombobulating effects of this most recent assault, though she might as well have been unconscious for all the good it did.

Foyi was just beginning to clear her senses, her vision sharpening even as the inane ringing in her ears continued to fluctuate with each ragged breath she took, when she finally caught sight of Vaevi again. The bounty hunter had apparently been the least affected by the concussion grenade's blast, for she was further up the ridge, closer to where they had been, and had scrambled to what little cover could be provided by a thick cluster of tangled fungal vegetation, fumbling with her E-11s and attempting to line up a shot on any vulnerabilities the tank might possess. Another concussion grenade arced out toward her position, and Vaevi was forced to scurry back down the slope, drawing closer to her companions as she did so.

Rayf, despite having been well within the concussive blast of the tank, recovered quickly, extricating himself from Foyi and taking a grip on her arm, hauling her to her feet, despite the dazed state in which she remained. He was shouting something at her, but she could not look at his face, or anything, too long without her vision swimming and her eyes watering, and the incomprehensible static that formed the entirety of her ability to hear continued to bewilder her and prevented her from understanding his words. But she allowed him to drag her stumbling to her feet, pulling her back up the slope with Vaevi supporting her other side as they angled up and away from the Imperial tank, which was still churning mud as it slid back up the slope in an attempt to crest the ridge ahead and above them, thus cutting them off. If the Imperials came to this region for the sarlacc or the Felucians present, they were now more concerned with the trio of offworlders, and were determined to stop them from evading capture.

"At least they're not trying to kill us!" Vaevi shouted as she and Rayf drug Foyi to the side, backtracking down the slope for several meters in order to reach another ridge.

"They'll get around to it!" Rayf replied. Foyi blinked rapidly in surprise; she had actually hear their words, though not clearly, as though the insulation she felt had been stuffed into her ears was finally falling out. She reached out to the Force once more and found it tentatively answering her call, the waves that normally suffused her very being languid eddies at best as the effects of the concussion grenade continued to linger in her mind and physical form. But it was not debilitating enough that she continued to require assistance, and her legs began to carry her past the support of her compatriots. As one, the trio fled back up the slope, skipping past the blast radii of concussion grenades that fell amongst them. They could hear the gargantuan wheels of the tank grinding for purchase as it pursued them up the slope, the thunderous retort of grenade launchers as its turrets unleashed their payload in an attempt to fully incapacitate the three of them and undoubtedly allow the Imperials within the vehicle to take them prisoner. Foyi, her vision still swimming and her other senses only marginally useful, nevertheless trusted in the Force to guide her scrambling ascension, while gaining some assistance from Rayf, who helped her up and over the lip of a ledge above her. She glanced back down and over her shoulder as she did so, to see the Imperial tank rushing up the slope and turning slightly to the side, attempting to navigate the ledge upon which they stood, for unlike a walker, the vehicle's wheels and Felucia's gravity prevented it from simply climbing over the lip of the ledge. Even so, they would not be able to run very far in order to reach the next set of ridges that climbed above them like gigantic stairs to the uppermost reaches of the walls that encircled the valley and the sarlacc pit before the Imperial tank made it to a more manageable section of the slope that would doggedly place them upon the trio's tail almost immediately. Rayf and Vaevi paused for only a moment to make certain Foyi would remain upright on her own, then resumed their flight toward the next ridge above them. But the Twi'lek felt the solidity of the ledge beneath her feet, and stepped back to get a better look at a large boulder that had been ensconced in the mud forming the majority of the ledge at her feet. She jumped away from the boulder's relatively level upper surface, then stretched out with her palm as a means of focusing the waves and splashes of the Force around the boulder, straining through her body's exhaustion and the bewildering effects of the concussive blast on her senses as she seized the boulder in a powerful, telekinetic Force Grip and willed it to extract itself from the ledge's contours. With a groan of shifting stone and the rush of air as suction was broken by the mud losing its hold on the boulder, which emerged from the ridge and was hurled through the air like a meterorite falling through the atmosphere. The boulder, which was well over twice the size of the Twi'lek, hurtled through the air and slammed into the closest drive assembly of the heavy assault vehicle, mashing itself into the servos connecting the closest pair of wheels and eliciting a spray of sparks, chunks of stone, and bits of shrapnel across the slopes. The wheels made a horrific shrieking noise that echoed across the valley as they seized on the enormous boulder that had been lodged against the straining drive engines; the tank's struggle was inevitably pressing the boulder into the mud of the slope, acrid smoke billowing from the affected wheels, and the tank seemed to have lost much of its forward momentum, its weight beginning to draw it back down the slope meter by meter as its smoking pair of wheels infrequently locked up.

Rayf grabbed Foyi's shoulder, prompting her from the slight daze that had settled upon her by the strain of running, fighting, recent wounds, and continually calling upon the Force. "Nice one!" he remarked encouragingly. "Now move your ass, or lose it!"

His words were practically prophetic, for the Imperials in the tank slowly sliding back down into the depression seemed to have been disillusioned with the notion of capturing their chosen quarry live, for now the turrets arrayed on top and the sides of the vehicle's hull opened fire, lancing the intervening space with catastrophic crimson bursts of fire. Foyi, Rayf, and Vaevi threw themselves up the ridge barely in time to avoid those impacts as the laser cannons reduced the ledge predominantly made of mud and tangled fungi to superheated splatters of sticky, fungal matter and steamy globs of mud and shards of stone. They did not look back as those cannons tracked their movements, punching steaming craters in the slope's sides directly around them, splattering them with detritus and debris. Rayf lost his balance and almost slid into one of the smoldering craters, but both Vaevi and Foyi took one of his arms and hauled him to his feet, not even slowing down to do so as they clambered up the next lip. They had barely crested that ridge when another blast of laserfire practically disintegrated the ledge from beneath their feet, but the gunners' shots were a nanosecond behind the fleeing trio, and so they stumbled only slightly as the slope heaved beneath their feet. Chased by the gunners' ire, the three of them crested the next ridge, and then the next, before they finally made it to the uppermost heights of the walls enclosing the valley, and paused there to catch their collective breath.

Foyi had the courage to peer back over the edge, confident that they had now put enough distance and obstacles between themselves and the Imperial heavy assault vehicle below to make their aim less than accurate. She could see the tank below, having slid down the rest of the slope and into the depression; most of its wheels continued to function, but the pair on the rear end had completely seized up, and were actively pouring huge, billowing cumulonimbi of inky smoke. The tank could still move, but not quickly, as it would be forced to drag one of its pair of wheels along, and the vehicle actually looked to be in danger of catching fire. With her precise, Force-enhanced vision, she could see a geometric shape of darkness had emerged on the tank's dorsal area, an indication of a hatch having been opened to allow the passage of several beings. These were hulking beings in black stormtrooper armor in configurations she did not recognize, wielding heavy repeating blasters to cut down several Felucians who had broken away from the sarlacc's reach to greet the newly-arrived Imperial contingent with Force blasts and skullblades. But her gaze was drawn to a solitary figure who was standing atop the tank, a slender, hooded woman in maroon robes and shining, silvered armor. She seemed to be directing the Imperials' efforts in the depression, gesturing at targets at which the gunners still within the tank fired devastating blasts of energy. A sarlacc tentacle curled above the tank and slashed down toward the woman atop it, but she raised a hand, seemingly in defiance, and to Foyi's shock, her fingers shone with indigo light as a bolt of lightning crossed the intervening space, searing a deep, boiling scar down the length of the sarlacc's tentacle. If Foyi had thought she had heard the sarlacc scream in pain before, she had been mistaken, for the creature gave a shrill, keening wail that threatened to shatter her already bedazzled hearing. The robed woman continued pouring lightning born of the dark, virulent currents of the Force into the sarlacc until the creature withdrew its tentacles, finally relenting from the attack that Foyi, Rayf, Vaevi, and the Felucians had provoked, allowing the stormtroopers she commanded to approach the remaining Felucians and continue their assault.

Rayf was at her side again, catching hold of her shoulder to urge her onward and force her to move from her enraptured state, but he stopped suddenly as he caught sight of the woman below, lightning arcing from her fingertips. Foyi caught an uncharacteristic stream of fear from him as he hissed in a hoarse voice, "An Inquisitor..."

Vaevi scurried to the Twi'lek's other side, her frantic motions belying her desire to move as far from the ridge and the valley as possible while they still had the chance. But even she was struck momentarily dumb by the spectacle of a powerful Force-user cowing such an indomitable creature.

Before any of them could peel their gazes from the sight, however, the Inquisitor below must have sensed their regard, for she let the lightning playing about her fingertips dissipate, then turned about to look up at them from beneath the folds of her hood. She stood like that for a moment as all three Force-sensitives stared at each other from the great distance separating them, connecting on more than a simple visual level. Foyi felt the Force raging about the woman below, as though she represented the eye of a dark and terrible storm swirling and building upon the horizon of the endless sea. But looking into it, Foyi only drew back with fear and surprise, for no matter how much she stretched, how deeply she dived into the Force and sent its currents forth, she could not sense the individual below them. The Dark Side of the Force was undulating and twisting her senses all around the Inquisitor, but where the woman stood, there was a hole, as though she were cut off from the Force, or the Force refused to recognize her as a living being. If Foyi could not physically see the Inquisitor below, she would have assumed her presence to be imagined; even now, she wondered if the concussion grenade had defiled their senses more than she had at first assumed. At this distance, she could not see much of the Inquisitor's alien face, but what she did see was the flash of teeth as the woman bared them in a smile, or perhaps even a predatory snarl.

Foyi pushed herself away from the ridge and the jungle beyond, intending merely to get as far from the chaos below as possible. "I believe it's time to leave."

Vaevi gave an irritated sigh of relief. "Finally! Let's jet! I didn't sign onto this to deal with Imp Juggernauts and Inquisitors."

"None of us did," Foyi muttered in reply, feeling less sure of her chances of being reunited with Tama than ever before.


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Tama helped Nuri along as they scrambled through the ruins, following the Zabrak's vague directions regarding the locations of the other children who had taken up firing positions around the courtyard. The unfortunate rancor continued to stalk about the courtyard, evident by the few glimpses they caught down narrow alleys that opened along their sides, as well as the din that perforated the air as it bellowed and shrieked in pain. Tama had to close herself off from the Force as much as her exhausted and scrambled mind would allow, so as not to feel the pain of her temporary companion, the pain she had inflicted upon the rancor for the benefits of those she wished to protect, as well as herself. She could not blame the creature for being angry with her, for he was sentient enough to recognize that the suffering that had been inflicted upon him had been her fault, even if he did not understand the methods by which it had been caused. Tama felt if their positions had been reversed, she probably would have wanted to tear the meddling little Twi'lek apart with her claws as well.

Tama and Nuri continued running as quickly as they could through the alleys and passages, scrambling over piles of detritus and cracked slabs of permacrete. The exertion making their limbs leaden and drawing heavy, ragged breaths from their lungs was not entirely physical, for a fog had settled on their minds in the wake of the primal shriek of mental rage and agony that had nearly struck them both dead. It was for this reason that Tama continued to press forward, for she feared what the mental onslaught of their captor's ire had done to the other prisoners. For with that scream of denial, pain, and rage had been confirmed her worst fears regarding the identity and abilities of their captor. If she did not feel a sense of responsibility toward the other prisoners who had risked so much on her insane, half-baked plan, she would have fled into the jungles several minutes ago, putting as much distance between herself and her captor as possible, not caring for whatever monsters or obstacles she might meet out there.

Tama's bewildering and languid thoughts were pierced by the Zabrak's voice, as Nuri gasped out, "In here...I think." The two girls turned into a dark doorway ensconced in a low, ruined building lined by broken windows and filled with decaying furniture, to find the Twi'lek boy, Otar, learning against the edge of the window he had taken as his firing position. Tama breathed a sigh of relief seeing the boy still in one piece, but the words of motivation she was about to speak to gain his attention died in her throat as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and she saw that Otar was not moving. The only reason he was still slumped upright was because his form was braced by the wall and a stack of broken furniture propped against the same. His stolen E-5 Blaster Rifle lay across his lap, the barrel of the weapon still cooling, his cold fingers still locked around it. His eyes were opened wide, frozen in a stare of terror and pain, gazing off into oblivion; blood dripped weakly in tiny, drying streams from the corners of those eyes, nostrils, and ears, pooling about the collar of his ragged tunic. She could no longer feel his presence in the Force, which meant he was long dead.

Nuri mashed the palm of her hand into her eyes in anguish. "Blast. He was alive only a couple moments ago! Did he take a stray blaster bolt?"

Tama did not have to examine the body to know what had killed him. She squatted down and carefully extricated the blaster from the Twi'lek's stiff fingers, then reached forward and pushed the lids of his eyes closed as gently as her quivering fingers would allow. "'The Savior' did this."

Nuri suddenly had her A280 in hand, swinging the barrel about the room as though their captor was waiting in the dark recesses, obscured by shadow and spores. "He's _here_?"

Tama shook her head and hefted Otar's stolen blaster, striding toward the door through which they had entered. "No...he never touched Otar. He didn't have to. That scream we heard? That was... _him_. We didn't just hear him through telepathy, but through the Force."

Nuri's expression paled as she met Tama's grim gaze. "He's...like you? He can use the Force...to kill us without even touching us?" Her voice dropped even lower, and despite the bravado she had displayed thus far, her tone quavered with fear. "Can...you do that?"

Tama shrugged as she moved back toward the doorway again, the Zabrak following her so that they could continue on their quest to reunite with their fellow prisoners. "I've never tried...I, and others of my order, don't use the Force for such means. It's a perversion of its intent, and an abuse of its power. But I have heard of Force-sensitives who see the Force, and their connection to it, as merely a weapon, a tool to be wielded for their own selfish desires." She cast one last glance at Otar's still form, feeling sorrow despite the fact that she had known the Twi'lek boy for only a few days. "But...that scream we heard and felt through the Force was unfocused; it was an outburst, like a tantrum rather than an attack. And Otar was just caught in the fallout..."

Nuri also looked back at the boy's body, and hurried to catch up to Tama as they entered the alleyway's and claustrophobic paths again. "We need to make sure everyone else is okay."

"And then we need to get the hell out of here," Tama agreed.

These assertions, and the roaring and wailing of the rancor in the courtyard provided speed to their movements as they sprinted through the alleys, passing several edifices in disrepair before they found the next position that had been taken by one of the other children. Nuri led the way through another darkened doorway into a dim room filled with spores and debris, before clambering up a rickety set of stairs to the upper floor, where they found Cyran lying on the floor amongst the mold and shards of furniture she had arranged into a miniature fort from which she could fire down upon the courtyard glimpsed through the nearest shattered window. Tama immediately reached out into the Force, and felt the Duros' own breaths whispering through her ears, and nearly gasped in strangled relief to find Cyran still alive, though the weak and fluttering light of her presence in the Force denoted her tenuous state of being. Nuri vaulted the tiny fortifications and crouched by Cyran's side, helping her to a sitting position as the girl's lurid, scarlet eyes attempted to refocus on the pair who had come to her aid. Tama leaned against the detritus that formed Cyran's fortifications and asked, "Are you okay, Cyran?"

The girl bobbed her head both vertically and horizontally, and answered in an adamant string of lilting Durese. Tama looked quizzically to Nuri, who unfortunately seemed just as puzzled. In answer to the Twi'lek's silent question, Nuri shrugged. "I can only make a little of it out, but none of it makes any sense. It's just gibberish, as far as I know."

Tama exhaled sharply, praying to whatever higher power was listening that the girl was only momentarily discombobulated, and not permanently lobotomized by the psychic assault they had all just suffered. Together, Tama and Nuri helped Cyran to her feet, then guided her back down the stairs and out of the ruined building, hobbling along their way, supporting each other so closely and completely, they were like some bizarre amalgamation of grimy limbs and somber, weary faces. Nuri provided the direction for their group, whereupon they found an alley choked with debris, providing excellent places of cover which had attracted the attention and usage of the Rodian boy, Farr. As per usual, he was paranoid and reckless, and nearly fired a burst of deadly lasers from his blaster rifle upon their approach, only stopping himself at the last possible microsecond from cutting them all down with blasterfire.

"Are you alright?" Tama asked as Nuri unleashed a string of vindictive that would make a Hutt blush due to the fright Farr had just given them.

Farr, quite indignant with the scare he had received, clutched his awkwardly lengthy fingers to his chest and proclaimed, "Could've shot you all dead!"

"He's fine," Nuri replied for him. "Unfortunately," she grumbled as an aside as she adjusted the weight of Cyran's arm around her shoulders.

"Let's get moving," Tama prompted, ignoring the squabble that would inevitably follow if she let the two of them continue to bicker. "We need to meet up with Fenn and get out of the city before that mudcrutch finds a way to reactivate the ray shields and trap us in here again."

As they left the alley, Farr drew to their side, moving quickly despite his own exhaustion, not bothering to help the girls with Cyran, instead taking the position of point guard as they moved around the courtyard's perimeters. "Where Otar?" he asked as they hurried.

"Dead," came Nuri's hollow response.

Farr's multifaceted eyes darkened, and he looked truly crestfallen. "Droids shoot him? Rancor eat him?" Upon finishing that thought, he gave Tama a glare, as though every misfortune they had suffered upon this day were her fault and hers alone.

"Apparently, when 'the Savior' has a fit, people die," Nuri growled in response, though she was not truly angry at the Rodian boy.

"What?!"

"He's like me," Tama explained over Cyran's head. "He can use the Force too, but he uses it as a weapon to harm those he hates."

"What chances we have?" Farr asked, little more than despair in his reedy wheeze.

"Alot, if we can get away from here while we're still able."

Cyran said something in her alien language, and the widening of Nuri's eyes told the Twi'lek that the Duros girl had finally said something intelligible. "Cyran says we should focus on finding a ship to get us out of this hellhole, or Otar's sacrifice will have been for nothing."

"Jungle first, ship later," Tama replied. She and Nuri barely had to help her along anymore, and Tama breathed a silent prayer of gratitude at the apparent continuing sanity of the Duros girl. Their captor had already ruined enough lives, and seeing so many of her companions continue in their determination to survive only bolstered her will to persevere in fighting for her own survival.

Their group eventually rounded another stretch of labyrinthine corridors and alleyways and found Fenn holed up in the remains of two landspeeders that were so covered in fungi, mold, and carbon scoring that Tama was unable to identify the models, or how old the vessels were. They had been overturned and mashed together due to their entwined and twisted repulsors, forming a triangular structure rising above an area of broken, pitted permacrete. Fenn had crouched within the crater's recesses, overshadowed by the canopy of vehicles above his head, which did not necessarily provide complete cover, but made it incredibly difficult to see anyone within the deep shadows cast by the buildings towering above, reaching for the sun that struggled to shine through the choking haze of spores that suffused the atmosphere. When the group of children approached the crater, Fenn was crawling out of the crater, messily regurgitating what little remained in his stomach as he gripped the edge and pulled himself up. Despite his difficulties and bewilderment, he had maintained his grip on his commandeered DL-44, and he weakly aimed it in their direction until he realized the group moving toward him was comprised of allies rather than enemies. He opened his mouth to offer greeting, only to retch and heave again, the fur along his face and throat rippling rapidly in momentary agony.

When he had managed to compose himself, Tama studied him, and nearly shouted for joy to find that he was none the worse for wear, save for a few new scrapes, as well as spores and mud smeared in his fur. "It's good that we found you," she gasped. "We need to get moving while the shields are still down?"

Fenn coughed, then peered into the courtyard. "Those ray shields aren't coming back up anytime soon. Your rancor did a number on those generators; unless battle droids suddenly became engineers, we won't have to worry about ray shields anymore."

"Unless 'the Savior' has backup generators he just hasn't turned on yet, or is trying to turn on right now."

Fenn's ears went vertical in surprise. "Good point. I'm ready to move, if you are." His eyes searched those in the group as Nuri began to lead the way from the alleys to the city proper, and confusion darkened his gaze. "Where's Otar?"

"Dead," Farr answered dejectedly. "Savior can use Braintails' Force. Killed him. With scream in mind."

"Blast," Fenn uttered, his voice coming out in a strangled tone. "Wait. The same Force you used to train that rancor?"

"Gain more of a trusting partnership with, actually," Tama replied. Her next sentence she intimated in a gloomy tone, as though she were wracked with regret. "One I broke, which is why he's so mad now, and why we should avoid him at all costs."

As if to punctuate her assertions, the rancor let out a keening, tortured cry, one born of pain, hatred, and frustration. Tama ducked her head upon hearing it, and followed Nuri meekly, too tired, too fearful, and too hurt to trust herself enough to guide anyone forward.

* * *

Their procession alternated between a hobble and a jog as they moved through the streets of the city, running between shadows and different areas of cover in order to stay out of the open. The aging day went through periods of true radiance and dim, grainy light as the sun slipped between brewing thunderheads and the general, atmospheric malaise of spores and shimmering humidity. The shifting levels of illumination made the children feel a marginal level of safety, for the changing conditions produced shadows that were as numerous as they were deep. Every fiber within Tama's being was urging her to sprint as quickly as her aching legs would allow through the ruins, bisecting them in her attempt to reach the quickest possible path through the eerie, crumbling buildings and into the jungle beyond. But her fellow prisoners followed a more laborious and stealthy approach, suggested by both Nuri and Fenn, practically jumping at every corner and shadow they passed. The city still echoed with the sounds of monsters prowling its depths, some of which sounded even more ravenous and exhilarated. Tama opened herself to the Force and felt her body quiver with the shivering sensations of abject excitement that flowed through the invisible energy field, permeating much of the city around her. The sensations of primal stimulation and predatory furor were so palpable, Tama subconsciously stretched out with a hand, believing she could gain tangible contact with the emotions wafting through the air. Many of the creatures their captor had set upon them had been trapped within the ruins' confines by the ray shields for lengthy periods of time. Being predators used to ranging over large areas of territory without competition in such claustrophobic proximity, discovering the invisible walls of their prison gone was cause for great joy, even in their nonsentient consciousnesses.

The group of prisoners paused within a wide doorway that had led into a hangar complex for both land-based repulsorcraft and airspeeders. Before them was the remains of a wide avenue that had likely been a major thoroughfare for pre-Clone Wars traffic in and out of the city. For the thoroughfare proceeded before them, traveling between two large municipal administrative buildings and through the remains of what appeared to have been a security fence and a military checkpoint. Beyond these ruined structures, the haphazard colonies of mold that carved their way through the decaying permacrete completely disguised the roadway as it carved its way into the jungle, where it disappeared amongst the tangled morass of fungi and gargantuan mushrooms beyond. Nuri gripped Tama's shoulder, and the Zabrak's enthusiasm tangled with the other external emotions the Twi'lek was experiencing at that moment. "The way out!" she whispered tentatively, as though by saying it aloud, she might somehow ruin their chances of escape.

"What waiting for?" came Farr's sharp reply, pushing forward, but stopping himself from running across the open ground of the avenue.

Nuri ignored him, continuing to speak to Tama. "Are there any monsters or droids nearby that'll see us if we run across there?"

Tama shook her head, her temples screaming with the motion, for her exhaustion, the mental and spiritual anguish of her ordeals, and the unusual reliance she had placed on the Force in such a short period of time were combining to form a haze over her enhanced senses. "I don't...think so. It's so hard to sense anything in particular..."

"I'm not hearing anything nearby," Fenn supplied, his ears twitching as they attempted to gain a better position to pick up any nearby threats.

Cyran babbled something, and Nuri shrugged in response. "Cyran says we might as well go for it. We've come this far, we don't have much else to lose if we take a chance now."

Farr made a wet, nasally sound that Tama assumed was his version of a snort of derision or incredulity. "Only our lives to lose. Nothing important."

Nuri gave him a black look. "Farr, that sarlacc you have for a mouth is really starting to piss me off. Why don't you take yourself and that sarcasm across that road, and you can let us know if there are any droids or monsters lying in wait for us."

Tama slashed a hand in the air between the two. "That's enough. We've already denied 'the Savior' so far, we are _not_ fighting amongst ourselves now."

Cyran suddenly reached forward and grabbed Tama's shoulder, using her free hand to point past the Twi'lek and into the avenue beyond. Tama turned, not waiting for an explanation or translation from Nuri, and caught her breath when she looked into the avenue they had been about to cross. For shuffling over the half-collapsed remnants of prefab residential housing was a large creature covered in armored scales, its widely-splayed legs seemingly dragging its immense and powerful body over the debris and the permacrete of the avenue beyond, its wicked claws scraping with eerie shrieks against the ground before it. The squat, ponderous monstrosity traveled across the permacrete with deceptively liquid movements, its four legs ending in a trio of razor-sharp claws. The creature had a large, triangular head narrowing to an angular snout filled with jagged teeth that protruded from its lipless jaws. Its immense, swaying spine was lined with three rows of crimson spikes jutting out from the armored scales of gray and black that covered its fearsome form. Yellow, slitted eyes peered out from beneath heavy brows as its humongous head swung back and forth, its mouth occasionally opening, as if tasting the air for information and the location of prey. The creature lumbered over the pile of detritus, walked out into the middle of the avenue, and then began moving slowly toward the apparent exit from the city, moving back and forth as it tested the limits of a boundary that was no longer there. It seemed determined to travel on into the jungle beyond, but remembered there had once been an unseen barrier present that prevented it from doing so. The children watched, holding their breaths in near-panic as the creature, only a few meters from them now, paused in the center of the avenue, its regard focused solely on the forests beyond. It seemed to be waiting for something; maybe it did not trust the revelation of the ray shields' absence. Perhaps it expected those ray shields to materialize to block its path once again. Why it chose to wait and see if such an event occurred instead of simply escaping into the jungle as it intended was unknown.

"What's it?" Farr hissed, his voice thickened with fear.

"Blast!" Fenn responded in an even lower whisper. "That's a Kell Dragon; damn big one, too. We're not getting past that thing."

Nuri looked to her Twi'lek friend with hope in her frightened eyes. "Could you...make friends with this one, too?"

Tama began shaking her head before Nuri finished the question. She was so tired, even simple speech was a monumental effort, and with the Dark Side continuing to press down upon her and only add to her weariness, there was no way she could attempt bonding with the creature blocking their path. Nuri's expression was crestfallen, but she seemed understanding of the fact that Tama required rest if she were to call upon the Force in such a direct and strenuous way again.

Farr, however, did not. "But you make rancor listen. Rancor is bigger than kell dragon!"

Tama brought a hand to her strained and tired eyes. "The size doesn't matter...it's not an ability I can call upon whenever I want. Hell, yesterday, I didn't even know I had it, and even without that, I can't call on the Force constantly without consequences."

"Then we'll try something more conventional," Fenn remarked, shoving his DL-44 in his belt and scooping up a palm-sized shard of permacrete. Before anyone could stop him, he stood and hurled the debris as far as his short, weakened arms would allow. Judging by the arc of the piece, the Bothan had meant to throw it right over top the kell dragon and into the underbrush of the jungles beyond. But instead, the shard of permacrete hit the avenue just behind the kell dragon and skittered across the ground, bouncing and rolling as it was lost amongst the same pile of debris the creature had just slithered over. Upon hearing the sharp clatter of the shard on the ground, the kell dragon spun around with alarming speed, its eerie, narrow eyes searching the ruins around it to determine from where the stone had come. It turned toward the debris from which it had emerged, and began taking great gasps of the air, smelling and tasting the atmosphere in an attempt to locate new prey.

Tama could feel her danger sense growing, like a discordant strain of music that pounded relentlessly through her skull. She bit back a curse, then turned to Farr, whispering, "Throw again. Away from us, preferably."

Fenn, who looked both sheepish and frightened, scooped up another shard of permacrete and put all his might behind his next throw, aiming it for the ruins from which the kell dragon had first emerged. The shard sailed through the air at the same time Tama raised her hand, focusing her Force-enhanced senses on the destination she wished the stone to reach, instead of the stone itself. A low, thunderous hum permeated the air as the Force seized the stone for an instant, adding a sudden burst of acceleration that caused it to sail farther through the air than Fenn could have hurled it. The stone flew past the kell dragon, overtop the pile of rubble, and deep into the prefab structure, where it struck something metallic with a resounding clang. The kell dragon gave a predatory growl and slithered over the rubble, disappearing back into the prefab structure with frightening speed. Tama released her grip on the Force with a gasp, and Nuri sprang to her feet, gesturing forward with her A280 Blaster Rifle. "Alright, move it while it's distracted!"

The children scrambled from the doorway and pounded across the avenue, Tama lagging behind and practically being dragged along by Nuri and Cyran. Fenn and Farr inevitably drew ahead, keeping their blasters in hand and sweeping the open area with their aim, their eyes flicking back to the ruins in which the kell dragon had disappeared, drawn by the infrequent snuffles and snarls the predator made within. They crossed the avenue in moments, their pattering feet not loud enough to alert the kell dragon, and had just drawn within the shadows of the old security checkpoint when they cried out in unison and fell to the ground as agony lanced through their minds and robbed them of control of their limbs. Their captor, "the Savior", was back, and the scream of frustration and anguish they had heard before had not prepared them for the boiling rage that sheared through their skulls. With that emotion came words, speech barely intelligible and cutting like vibroblades in their minds, scattering their thoughts and severing their emotions as their captor's powerful mental presence dominated their attention through telepathy and his power in the Force. For Tama, with those words came a surging of the Dark Side, the thousand clamoring voices always gibbering at the edges of her awareness suddenly becoming a chorus of screams as the voice called upon the Dark Side that sustained him and tortured him simultaneously. Tama thought she was audibly screaming along with the voices, but she could not even hear herself think, much less her own voice as their captor's screams raged through her.

 _Pretenders! Hypocrites! Clawdites of Darkness! No no no no not again, please, not again, it's been so long and so happy, the darkness watching from its hidden places. The darkness will not remain hidden! Your sins are scarred into your flesh, behind your eyes! They dance upon the cells of your brain. They beg and plead and call and cry from the depths of your thoughts! You are soaked in the blood of the unbalanced Universe, and you must repent, you must leave off the suckling of your darkness and the gluttony of your iniquities. Oh, again we find it, haunting and laughing from the shadows. Why does it hurt? Why does it sustain? Why is the Universe gifting us with the sins of the born evils? We don't want it, we need it need it need need need. You will not leave! The forest is darkness, the forest is sin! It will take your black hearts from your chests and cradle them close. We can't save you out there, only in here, where the Universe will have its due, where sins can be taken and rewritten, where evil dies with the deaths of the bloody born._

The voice continued to shriek and rage its insanity through their minds, leaving the children rolling about in the mud and mildew in agony and insensate anguish. But whereas before "the Savior" had held unknown and unchecked power over his prisoners, and his abilities could only be guessed at, they had all experienced some measure of his strength in the Force, and though daunting, the enigma of deadly intent and insane ramblings had been shattered. And though his telepathic message carried the weight of the Force behind it, his words were motivated by desperation and fear, rather than the calm and superior facade he had displayed before. He was vulnerable, and by attempting to stop their escape at this moment, he had miscalculated by displaying that vulnerability.

So Tama, more on instinct than any direct attempt, found herself tapping into the Force, confidence born of the part of her mind that remained coherent realizing a weakness in her enemy she might exploit. Despite the poor state of her mind and body and the mental barrage she was presently under, she found herself rising through the screams, through the oily darkness writhing across her flesh, through the vibrations of power and dark intent shivering through her teeth, and achieving enough cognizance to respond. And respond she did, with all her strength, drawing upon her feelings of violation, exhaustion, and righteous anger to sharpen her focus, to reach out with her telepathic capabilities that she had yet to develop to any great accomplishment. But her emotions bolstered her power to retaliate. Like a blade, she thrust her own mental assault back at the voice that invaded her head, and felt dark satisfaction when "the Savior's" oppressive presence recoiled in surprise and a tremble of fear, for if he was aware of her sensitivity to the Force, he was still unprepared for her to fight back, to resist him. She got the impression from the brief mental contact between them that he was not accustomed to competing with other Force-users on mental battlefields, and was momentarily at a loss as to how to maintain the power he held over his escaping prisoners.

Tama, fully focused on the battle of wills being waged in the Force, had little awareness of her external environment, but still had the presence of mind to realize she was subconsciously grinning. She drew deeply of her own pain, her memories of the indignities and injustices she had suffered, even the feelings of hopelessness and simmering rage, and felt the Force sharpen around her. She pressed her assault, targeting their captor's desperation and insecurities and scrambling his own focus. She could feel the power of the Force surging within her, the voices of the Dark Side quieting from screams to smooth, encouraging songs as she drew upon the unique and ailing connection to the Living Force that Felucia possessed. In that moment, she found the Dark Side no longer scared her; she contemplated it as an ally to help her defeat this so-called Savior once and for all, to grind him into pulp for all the deaths he was responsible. For the pain and tribulations he had inflicted upon her. It was past time he pay for his _own_ sins, and she found she was more than willing to be the executor of his punishment.

But their captor's Force presence rounded on her, and she found herself writhing on the cracked, scummy permacrete as his terrible regard fell upon her alone. His voice thundered through her brain, and she could not help but cower from power he was able to wield. _Tama. Lost Tama. Pretty Tama. Your darkness is here at last, barely peering over the surface of your soul. No, it's not dark, it's young and old all at once. It doesn't know what it does; the planet does, yes yes yes. The Universe? No, the Universe demands her sin. We eat it and make it gone, make the Universe a place where beauty no longer hides lies, where youth is not darkness. This is your Crucible, Tama, as we said, oh yes we did we did we did. Let it break you. Let it shape you. Let the darkness out. Give your sins voice and name and song. Try to destroy me with your sin and the sins of this world, the sins of all your kind. You will see. You will be saved. Let us save you save you save you from yourself, from your shadow, the demons that lurk and grin and lick behind your eyes. Bring the darkness to us. Use it against me. I can take it. We need it. No we don't. Yes we do. Bring your darkness Tama. Lay it upon our sacrificial altar, and be cleansed, be free of the Universe's righteous vengeance. Be free. Let me save you. Please please please don't leave stay there until the darkness comes. Let me save you._

With great effort, Tama pulled herself free of the internal mire "the Savior" seemed determined to keep her in. She retreated within herself, doing her best to keep his Force presence from her inner thoughts, to protect herself even as she fled the sudden power born of her negative emotions and the weapon those promised in the Force, from the exultant whispers of the Dark Side. For a moment, she realized that she had actively embraced the Dark Side at the expense of herself, not for the preservation of herself or the other children somewhere beside her, but in order to gain a sensation of revenge against their captor. Foyi would have been disappointed in her. Her parents would have been dismayed. But she was motivated less by these revelations, and more by the fact that "the Savior" had recognized her temporary call upon the Dark Side's power. He had rallied in his moment of triumph, as she gave into her "inner darkness" and "inherent sin", and no matter what tools or weapons the Dark Side could have offered her, she refused to play into their captor's machinations, to give "the Savior" justification for his heinous actions and the insane game he played with his victims.

She could feel his overpowering presence worming its way through her mind, attempting to suppress her thoughts, trying to burrow past those on the surface, to reach the darker, regretable intentions, the parts of her mind that still urged her to use whatever tool or weapon was available to her to combat the evil violating her mind, no matter the consequences. She struggled to keep him out, to strengthen her mental defenses and provide an impenetrable wall against him. She drew upon the Force again, trying to ignore the dark whispers, reaching within herself for the serene center of emotionless detachment that Foyi had taught her in their practice sessions together. Even here, even under such a withering assault, she reached for that center, that nexus of power buried deep in her essence, and made contact with it, drawing upon it for the strength it provided. For the oneness with the Force and the galaxy around her.

Tama's eyes snapped open, her vision blurring as she regained focus, though she saw nothing beyond her. The Force swirled and contorted around her, shaking the ground and uprooting clouds of spores and clusters of fungi within close proximity as she called upon the unlimited energy within and beyond her. The leering, searching voice was shoved back as the pure connection to the origin of her being and the Force extricated "the Savior's" consciousness from her own, as though prying his dark claws from her brain. And as she did so, she gave a final shove, a telepathic burst of power that shivered out from her toward their unseen captor. She heard a scream both pained and frustrated, an outpouring of rage as he lost his mental hold upon her, as his constant reliance upon telepathy and the Force finally wearied him enough he was no longer able to combat Tama's weak but precise and calm measure of retaliation. And as the scream died away in her mind and those still lying in the middle of the avenue, Tama knew that she had bought them all a respite from "the Savior's" predations. Her awareness of her body grew, as well as the forms of her companions beside her. And she was surprised to feel that the majority of the pain and exhaustion she had experienced before hand had lessened greatly, a byproduct of her balanced, collected utilization of the Force. Compared to the brief but repulsive contact she had had with the Dark Side, she felt a spiritual sense of peace and certainty, as though she had discovered the single right means by which sentient beings could touch the Force. She returned to full consciousness, finding herself lying on her back, and with little effort, she rolled over on her side, preparing to push off the slimy duracrete and return to a standing position.

Tama turned her face and was greeted to the enormous, foreboding, and jagged regard of the Kell Dragon.

Tama froze for a microsecond, though it felt like an eternity as her battered mind attempted to comprehend this most horrendous turn of events. The kell dragon appeared to be studying her with as much interest as she was regarding it with shock. Its jaws gaped, letting out a rush of fetid air and a low growl that thrummed with reedy vibrations from its chest, radiating outward through the cracked permacrete below them, so that Tama felt the vociferations in her chest. They seemed to stop her heart for the briefest of moments. Dimly, Tama wondered if she might use this moment of inactivity and shock to reach out to the kell dragon in the Force, to attempt a mental and spiritual connection with the great beast akin to the one she had briefly shared with the rancor. But the very fiber of her being recoiled at the idea of attempting another battle of wills almost immediately after surviving the second one this day, one that had completely drained her of the last of her strength. Besides, the kell dragon seemed even less receptive to such a link as the rancor had; the emotions she was dimly registering from the creature mere centimeters from her face suggested a singular desire to scoop her into its mouth and rend her to bloody ribbons with its fangs. There would be no negotiating with this one, not in her current state.

So Tama forced herself to snap free of her reverie and act on instinct alone, trusting in the serenity she had found in the Force. She rolled to the side, drawing closer to the kell dragon, which made the creature's head shift back in surprise for a moment, but then dart forward again. Thinking she must be attempting a desperate attack or means of escaping, the monstrosity's jaws cracked wide, its yellowed fangs gaping as it lunged to meet Tama's advance. But Tama had rolled to bring her trailing arm back for a swift assault, the Force wreathing her fist as it collided with the tip of the kell dragon's snout. There was a resounding crack as the Force-enhanced punch shattered something beneath the creature's plated scales, and the kell dragon's lunge was halted abruptly, its snarl becoming a wail of pain as it hopped back. Tama, for her part, barely felt the blow, though the vibrations of it did crawl painfully up her arm and rattle the socket of her shoulder.

Granted a few moments of breathing room as the kell dragon pawed hopelessly at its injured muzzle, Tama levered herself to her feet, and turned to see her companions struggling upright themselves, in various states of pain and delirium. Cyran was the first to gain her equilibrium again, scooping her blaster up and pausing a moment in abject fear upon seeing the wheezing, snarling kell dragon shaking its head and patting its nose with its claws. The creature's continued shrieks of pain were edged in primal rage as blood began leaking from its nostrils. Its yellow eyes, filled with hatred and hunger, turned to regard the children, and it let out an undulating roar.

Despite the bewilderment the children continued to feel and the extreme difficulty with which they were finding their footing, Tama's companions came back to awareness quickly at the sound of the kell dragon's pain and wrath, splitting the air with its call less than a meter from them. Tama, never keeping her eyes off the kell dragon, began to backpedal as quickly as she could, bringing her E-5 Blaster Rifle to bear. "Go! Head for the jungle!"

Cyran helped Fenn and Farr both to their feet, while Nuri and Tama practically supported each other as they ran, trying to keep at least one of the pair facing the kell dragon as they retreated. The beast gave a roar, bloody spittle and mucus flung from its tossing head, and began to bound after them, springing forward to close the several meters of distance separating it from its intended prey. Nuri unwound her arm from Tama's waist and shouldered her A280, triggering a brief, crimson fusillade of laserfire directly into the kell dragon's face. The air was split with the sounds of the creature's pained screams, their nostrils assaulted by the acrid stench of ozone and molten flesh. Nuri fired again through the smoke and the splashes of blood, and the kell dragon's face thrust through the haze, its scarred and carbon scored scales bleeding profusely. The beast gave another air-shattering roar that trailed off into a squeal, and it began to rub its head and face roughly against the ground, as though sliding its wounded skin against an abrasive surface would somehow scrub the pain of its injuries away. Nuri seized Tama's shoulder again lest she fall over from her unreliable balance, and the two girls turned and ran as quickly as their tired legs and addled minds would allow them. They soon caught up with Cyran, Fenn, and Farr, and the group of prisoners finally liberated themselves as they passed the ruins of the checkpoint and the security fences. They immediately turned for the thickest, most snarled tangle of fungal growth they could find, counting on the jungle to shield them from pursuit. They could hear the kell dragon's loping, bounding pursuit, its claws scrabbling for purchase on the ruined avenue and the thick, slushy mud, its breath coming in ragged wheezes.

The children ran as fast as they were able, proceeding in no particular direction, save for that which was opposite of the kell dragon's ire and pursuit. They gasped and groaned as they maneuvered around the gargantuan trunks of mushrooms dripping with slime and showering spores from their caps, like localized clouds laden with precipitation. They kept each other running, no longer concerned for their personal survival, but with the cohesion of the entire group. When one of them would stumble over a cluster of fungi, or an aching limb would buckle beneath them, the others would be quick to haul them back to their feet, to support them until they could run again. Occasionally, the kell dragon would draw within mere meters, and would spot them across infrequent clearings, only for its leaping bounds to be frustrated once more by blasterfire from any of the group that could bring their weapon to bear at that moment. Most of their shots went wild, or seemed ultimately ineffectual, but the few that did serious damage to the kell dragon began to mount up, until the creature was no longer capable of such fearsome leaps. Indeed, despite its wrath, the kell dragon began to allow a greater distance between it and its prey, as its speed began to lessen due to the debilitating number of blaster burns and bleeding lacerations it had suffered. Tama was certain hours of dogged pursuit passed before the kell dragon finally dropped back out of hearing and her Force senses, leaving them alone. Considering their physical conditions though, it was likely only minutes, no more than half an hour at most, had passed since they had entered the jungle and the kell dragon finally gave up the chase.

By that time, the weary group of escaped prisoners were barely able to keep moving forward, their spines hunched in exhaustion, their legs shuffling through mold and mud, their weapons drooping by their sides. Nuri suggested calling a halt, and they did so once they found themselves in a small clearing, miniscule slants of light from the hidden sun breaking through the cloud layer, the spores, and the haphazard canopy spreading above them. Each one of them allowed themselves to collapse on the ground wherever they happened to be standing, the undergrowth of lichens, moss, and smaller mushrooms feeling like the most divine and indulgent of beds in the galaxy. Tama let herself fall upon her back in a thick cluster of mushrooms, and ached to answer the desire to let herself slip into deep slumber, to forget her troubles and the anguish of the last few weeks in the oblivion of blissful sleep.

Nuri sat beside her, laying her blaster rifle across her knees and heaving a sigh. Tama could feel her exhaustion through the Force, could feel it entangle with her own, and marveled that the girl could actually remain seated. The Zabrak stared off into the forest's depths, and a grin, half-mad with both glee and trepidation, emerged across her lips. "Well, I'll be farkled. We actually made it out of the city. Out of that deathtrap."

Tama breathed a heavy exhalation, though she let her mouth curve downward into a grimace. "I just hope we haven't run headlong into another deathtrap."

Farr suddenly let out a wail of fright, causing everyone to spring back to their feet and turn toward the new threat emerging from the depths of the jungle. Farr was pointing his blaster at the edge of the clearing, where a trio of large creatures wriggled their way from beneath the shadows cast by towering mushrooms, seemingly unconcerned with the threat upon their lives. The creatures were large, oblong tubes of slimy, phosphorescent flesh, mottled with lumpy skin and patches of illumination along their backs and just behind their heads. These heads were little more than thick protrusions of similar flesh, decorated by a pair of eyes that was arranged vertically down their mostly featureless faces; their mouths gaping maws ringed by fleshy mandibles. Two sets of stubby legs that were little more than pseudopods propelled them across the ground in hypnotic, undulating motions, sticking to any surface they chose to traverse as though they were coated in adhesive. The creatures reminded Tama of giant spice grubs, and she found herself tensing as the creatures approached, but they ultimately seemed uninterested in the group of children in the clearing. They spread out about the perimeters of the small depression they had taken refuge, their wide mouths dipping to the ground, their twitching mandibles scooping up shovelfuls of lichens and fungi.

Farr, his grip on the blaster quivering, began to squeeze the trigger, but Tama halted him with a determined tone. "Farr. No."

The Rodian looked back to her, wrestling with himself as to whether he should listen to her or his own fears. He looked back at the massive larval creatures as they shuffled past, and took a reflexive step backward as one of them drew within less than a meter of where he stood. And yet, the creature took no notice of him as it busily set about feeding itself, cutting a path through the undergrowth with its incessant mastication.

The other children, most of whom had pulled their blasters, slowly lowered their weapons as the creatures rounded the clearing, decimating swaths of fungi and lichens with their impressive hungers. The children relaxed somewhat, though none of them allowed themselves to lie down on the ground again. Save for Tama, who slumped back onto her chosen carpet of mold and moss and let herself drift with the Force, feeling the presences of the creatures, relishing their simplicity and serenity. Here, in this place rife with the Dark Side, choked with ravenous predators, and haunted by the horrors of the twisted sociopath they had just escaped, she found a moment's respite. A period of blissful limbo between fright and flight, a moment where she could simply exist and leave her worries behind her in the past.

Cyran levered herself off the ground and tentatively approached the gray, green, and blue flank of one of the large, shuffling creatures. She reached a long-fingered hand to the lumpy, moist flesh, and carefully stroked the creature's side. The beast took notice but did not seem to care, eliciting a thrumming noise and a feeling of contentment that filtered through the Force and made soothing music in Tama's ears. Another one of the creatures approached Farr, its mandibles waving through the air, as if testing his scent to determine if he was something edible. The Rodian gave a squawk and scrambled back to Fenn's side; the Bothan did not seem particularly enthused regarding that, but he was also uncomfortable with the animals' presence, and the pair huddled close to each other, keeping tight grips upon their blasters. Fenn's ears stood upright, and he gazed across the clearing to where Tama lay. "So...we're out. Now what?"

Tama opened her eyes through disgruntled effort. She wanted nothing more than to lose herself in the Force within that bed of fungi, to let herself drift off to sleep and forget all her troubles, hoping that she would awaken to find all the tumultuous events of the recent past nothing more than a nightmare. She came to a sitting position with a groan, and was surprised to see everyone gathered was staring at her, awaiting her response. If most of the other children deferred to her advice before, her plan to stage an escape and her ability to call a rancor to their assistance in the process had earned her the title of de facto leader of this group. Whether she liked it or not, the others looked to her for direction and purpose. The plan they had called insane and hopeless had worked against all odds, and so they had placed their faith in her and her abilities. Greater faith than she had in herself, certainly.

The Twi'lek girl rubbed her eyes. "Well, the important thing now is to find a defensible position where we can get some much needed rest. Establish an order of watch, so there's always someone keeping an eye out for monsters, or droids, or the blasted Savior himself. Then we need food, and water."

Cyran, who still stood and patted the side of one of the large, wriggling grubs, asked a question. Nuri nodded, then faced Tama. "We need to find a ship offworld."

Tama shrugged as the weight of their shrinking options and the responsibility heaped upon her shoulders beginning to drag her high spirits back to reality. "The only one we might find would be back in that city, where that bastard is. Unless we can find these Imperials who may or may not be on this world, and convince them to lend us a ship."

Nuri smirked with dark humor she barely felt. "If they are here, we could get a fast ride to Coruscant if you gave them a demonstration of your abilities."

"Or a blaster bolt to the face," Tama replied. "The Empire doesn't look kindly upon Force-users who aren't interested in kissing the Emperor's feet."

"This is a moot point anyway, right?" Fenn interjected. When he was treated to a collection of curious looks, he continued with an explanation. "I mean, we were all so busy punching lightspeed out of there and away from that kell dragon, I wasn't really paying attention to where we were going. And this forest looks all the same to me. Does anyone remember where the city is?"

Everyone began to look about the clearing, trying to get their bearings in the forest of fungal foliage, where each individual specimen looked so different and yet so alike, it was impossible to pick out any particular defining features. Tama looked to the area of the clearing from whence she was certain they had arrived, but any signs of their tracks or passage had already been defiled by the larval beast's appetites. Tama refused to panic, though. The ruins had been their prison and the domain of the horrific Force-user who had kidnapped them, but they may also represent the group's best chance for escaping the planet. They had not run so insurmountably far from the city that they could not find it, and given some rest and concentration, she believed she could find it again. Even on such a world tainted with the Dark Side, places with exorbitantly high concentrations of pain, loss, and death were unmistakable to those with the Force. She could find it again if needed. Tama finally stood, and had to close her eyes for a moment as she swayed, lest she faint. "I can find it again. I'm hoping we won't have to go back there, but we may not have the choice if we want to get offworld. We should get moving, though. I fought off 'the Savior's' mental attacks so far, but that doesn't mean he can't use to Force against us again. Putting distance between ourselves and him will help."

With weariness that made their limbs leaden and their bodies ache, the children forced themselves to proceed, leaving the clearing behind and plunging into the forests' thick, snarled confines. The large, docile grubs deigned not to follow them, too concerned with feeding themselves. They moved at a slower pace than they had before, for each of them were pushing themselves far past their endurance, but necessity and fear drove them onward. They clambered over fluctuating terrain, slipped between tightly-snarled strands of fungi reaching up to the murky heavens above. The day drew on as Felucia's primary slipped across the sky, though it offered only momentary patches of light that valiantly struggled through the windblown spores and the canopies above. With the aging of the day came a stifling heat and humidity as moisture and spores clogged the air, and soon the former prisoners were gasping heavily, not just because of their exhaustion, but also due to the difficulty with which each breath of the thick, cloying atmosphere was drawn.

Nuri was the one to finally call a halt, and only because everyone else was a few centimeters away from falling flat on their stomachs or backs. She planted the stock of her A280 in the mud, and gestured ahead of them, up at a ridge that rose far past the canopy and out of sight. Its slopes rose to either side as far as their sight could see in the jungle, suggesting the ridge was only one height of a much larger terrain feature, perhaps a moor of moss-covered and fungus-wreathed slopes, or even something that was as large as a mountain. "There," the Zabrak gasped through clenched jaws. "We can make our camp...up there. We'll have...a wall to our backs, and anything on the ground will be forced to climb up to us, just as long as they're not bigger than...a rancor."

Tama honestly expected there to be some complaints regarding the slope they must now climb, but the group, as a whole, were silent as they grimly set about their task. All were far too tired to utter little more than gasps as they came to the base of the slope, their gnarled and battered fingers and worn boots finding fractures and cracks with which they could draw themselves up the slope's steep face. The tenacious fungi growing across the surface also provided suitable protrusions and makeshift handles for them to grab and brace themselves, and yet, it took them the better part of an hour for everyone to make it to the top of the ridge. The slopes of the hill rose above them, but atop the ridge was a jagged, mostly level ledge which was a perfect place for them to camp, the stone blanketed with a thin carpet of moss, lichens, and mushrooms. As they pulled themselves upward, they threw themselves across the ledge's surface, and lay there gasping and willing the aches and pains to leave their overextended and malnourished forms.

Tama rolled onto her back, gazing up the contours of the cliff above, rising into the dark haze of the sky above, infrequently parted by blades of light from the sun streaming downward. Nuri flopped beside her, cradling her blaster against her cheek as though it were a pillow. "We need food...and water," the Zabrak murmured.

Tama found it difficult to concentrate on her friend's words, her eyelids fluttering open and closed. "We need rest," she replied around a thickened tongue.

Nuri nodded slowly, conceding the point without any argument. She pressed her palms against the ledge, straightening her arms and using what little strength she had left to bring herself up to a sitting position. "We'll establish a watch. Take turns...so no one and nothing can simply sneak on us up here."

Tama groaned as she forced herself into a squat, twitching her _tchun_ weakly in agreement. "I'll take first watch then. Let everyone get some rest, so...so we actually have the strength to find ourselves food and water."

Nuri pressed a hand against the Twi'lek's clavicle and gently forced her back down, shaking her head all the while. "No. _You_ rest. You can...you have this power none of us understand, but you've used it to save us and guide us more than once. And...you say that _murglak_ has the same kind of power, so you are our best weapon against him and whatever he might throw at us. We need you rested and ready to fight, if need be. I'll take...first watch. Let everyone else get some rest."

Tama wanted to argue vehemently against this, but the prospect of finally allowing herself to rest was too great to overlook. She laid her head back in the moss, her weary vision alternating between Nuri's concerned and haggard face, and the spears of sunlight lancing through the clouds above. The two sights began to blur, and she had a moment when she questioned what exactly she was seeing, before her entire world went black.

* * *

Tama awoke slowly, barely aware of the hand on her shoulder shaking her awake. Her eyes fluttered open, her vision momentarily confounded by a visage of grayish green with two, swimming points of red. Her ears were assaulted by an alien tongue she was unfamiliar with, and a cold grip of fear encircled her heart as she sat upright, instinctively reaching for the Force and gathering it about her hands. Those hands thrust forward to produce a savage Force push, before her sleep-blurred vision clarified and produced the features of Cyran. Tama gave the Duros a bewildered expression, working her jaw to produce enough saliva to articulate speech again, but the girl was gesturing wildly to the ledge's lip. Tama followed the direction of her gestures to see the others gathered about the ledge, peering over the edge and into the gloom beyond. Tama curled her _lekku_ about her throat in an instinctively defensive gesture when she realized how dark it had become, and she could not see Nuri amongst those at the edge of the ridge.

Tama grabbed her E-5 Blaster Rifle and crawled to the edge of the ridge beside Farr, uncertain of the support her feet would actually provide her if she tried to stand. She peered past the Rodian's shoulder and down into the forest below, to see several humanoid figures moving inexorably up the slopes of the ridge, climbing up toward them. She raised her blaster to take aim, but was stopped when she sensed the presence of Nuri again. Peering down the blaster's length, she could see that the figure closest to the top of the ridge was Nuri, her blaster rifle slung across her back as she picked her way up the cliffside. She paused often, making certain to turn toward the other figures behind and below her, lingering long enough to indicate the best handholds and divots in which those who followed her might clamber up. Tama shifted her aim to the other figures, and her keen, low-light vision began to pick out humanoids of varying species, all individuals who were vaguely familiar to her. She lowered her blaster, and then made a wave of her hand to those beside her, indicating they should do the same.

The fur on Fenn's cheeks and throat ruffled itself, and he turned to the others as he hissed, "They're more of the other kids!"

Cyran seemed equally excited by this prospect, that others with whom they had been imprisoned had also managed to survive, while Farr grumbled something under his breath regarding how they would be unable to sneak around now with so many people clomping through the jungles. Tama was simply glad that Nuri continued to live and breathe, but found herself curious as to where she found so many other fellow prisoners.

Nuri was the first to crest the ridge, and as a group, Tama, Cyran, Farr, and Fenn each helped up the other children following her, receiving friendly tactile contact or words of gratitude in multiple languages in return. Nuri, who was breathing heavily more with a sense of accomplishment and enthusiasm than exertion, gestured to those being helped to the top of the ridge and explained. "I went hunting after I'd gotten a little rest. Hunting for food, not allies, but I ended up finding both." She tossed several corpses of small, leathery avian creatures, their carcasses affixed to the carrying strap removed from a blaster. The carcasses were either devoid of heads or had deep burns in their chests, once again providing evidence of Nuri's pinpoint marksmanship. The Zabrak girl hooked a thumb over her shoulder. "There's a little stream of water down the slope, about twenty meters to the left. The water looks relatively clean, though we should probably boil it first, just to be sure."

"Good idea," Tama replied. She cast a look down at the fowl carcasses, and could not stop her stomach from growling, so she looked away and back to the newcomers, who were busy reacquainting themselves with the other escapees. Thus began a lengthy period of introductions and swapping of tales of pain, horror, and ultimately, hope, as they escaped into the jungles, which, being no less terrifying, still seemed to be outside the reach of their kidnapper. There was a Togruta girl named Ashla, who barely spoke beyond giving her name, her dark eyes haunted with what she had seen during her own struggles in their kidnapper's "crucible". Beside her was a Gran boy calling himself Vo-Yees, but Tama was unable to make out much more from his speech due to his thick, guttural accent and the way he seemed to bite off each Basic word he muttered, as though chewing on a tough nerf steak. A Nautolan girl named Ossa seemed genuinely excited to see the others alive around her, which Tama found more than slightly discomforting, as she remembered the girl being one of those in the pit who fought hardest to secure all the meager rations dropped within for herself. And finally, the last of the company of newcomers, a Gormak boy calling himself Vibak-Ol, who glared with his red and yellow eyes at all those assembled, the hostility inherent in his emotions and features reaching Tama through the Force in the form of an acrid smell. Together, they all sat around the center of the ledge, where they uprooted enough fibrous and tough mushrooms and sprigs of moss to build a sizable amount of kindling, which they ignited with a low-intensity bolt from the holdout blaster they continued to carry with them. Within moments, they had a small but healthy fire, which they slowly fed and and sustained with larger stalks of mushrooms, until the flames were hot enough to properly cook the birds Nuri had managed to slay. Meanwhile, Nuri, Ashla, and Fenn set about properly preparing the carcasses for sustenance, skinning them and separating precious meat from bones. Ossa retrieved some sturdy and thin stalks of mushrooms, stabbing two of them into the ground to create supports for several held horizontally over the flames, upon which they skewered the paltry slabs of meat they had gleaned from the avians. The smell of sizzling meat began to fill the air; Tama's stomach initially revolted against the aroma, as it had gone so long without food, the thought of actually eating again sickened her. But as the smell grew in intensity and she became accustomed to it, Tama found her mouth beginning to water, which surprised her, as she had felt almost completely dehydrated for over a day now. The others gave appreciative comments and groans, but those gathered restrained themselves, waiting until the meat was properly cooked and proportioned out evenly to make certain all would gain the sustenance they so greatly craved.

As they sat around the small fire and watched the meat cook, Farr and Cyran clambered down the slope to retrieve water in the bowl provided by a hollowed-out bulb of fungus. Ashla continued to tend the meat, turning the spits upon which it had been skewered, keeping her eyes on the fire and the ground before her crossed feet. Vo-Yees was engaged in rapt conversation with Fenn, who was showing the Gran the DL-44 he was so proud of. Vibak-Ol was surreptitiously staring at the two, listening to Fenn's enthusiastic account of everything he knew about the weapon, as well as a mostly one-sided discussion of all the modifications that could be applied to the heavy blaster pistol if he had the right supplies and facilities. This led to an avid discussion on blasters and energy weapons in general, a subject both boys appeared to be well-versed in. The Gormak shifted slightly closer to the pair to hear better, obviously enraptured by the subject of weapons, though he was trying to pretend he could care less. Ossa had decided to seat herself directly between Nuri and Tama, who, having been sitting near each other, had intended to converse with each other quietly, until the Nautolan had inserted herself.

"So, when did all of you notice the shields were down and jetted out of that city?" Ossa seemed strangely optimistic and energetic, considering all that they had been put through in the last week or so. Tama found the contrast between the Nautolan's external and internal moods uncomfortable because she could feel the great pain hidden beneath the girl's surface thoughts and appearance. Perhaps this was merely the Nautolan's way of processing her experiences; Tama decided she should probably be grateful that the girl was not a shivering, gibbering wreck incapable of a single coherent thought.

Nuri cracked a knowing grin as she stared hungrily at the flames and the meat pierced above the licking tongues of fire. "Same time the shields went down. Had to dodge a kell dragon, but otherwise, everything was smooth as a Bith's head."

Tama snorted in disbelief at the Zabrak's penchant for understatement. She turned to the Nautolan, who's eyes were wide with amazement; or were they always that wide? "We...we were the ones to bring down the ray shields. Had a hella time at it too, but we figured it was fight or die. So we fought."

"And we're still breathing!" Nuri interjected triumphantly.

Ossa glanced back and forth between the two of them, her mouth agape. " _You_ took out the shields? By yourselves?!"

Tama made a weak gesture meant to indicate the others around the fire. "It was a group effort."

"Plus we had help from a rancor," Nuri added.

Ashla, Vo-Yees, and Vibak-Ol suddenly swiveled to look at Nuri and Tama at that comment, various expressions of disbelief and curiosity on their faces. Nuri only seemed to be emboldened by the attention, beginning a lengthy elaboration of how the rancor had indeed come to their aid, and ripped apart the emitters of the shield generators with its claws. Ossa was the one to ask the inevitable question regarding how they had managed to coerce or trick a rancor into aiding them in such a manner, and the Zabrak deferred the question to Tama. Tama, having been raised to practice her supernatural abilities in secret and to disguise her sensitivity to the Force, was initially uncomfortable explaining her connection to the Great Mystery, and how she had used it to call upon the rancor's aid. But she realized that if they were going to devise a means of escaping Felucia once and for all, it was likely she would have to draw upon the Force in a direct manner on more than one occasion, and it was better that she explain the concept, and her sensitivity, to it now, rather than later, when she did access the infinite energy of the Force and the other children would be reevaluating her as a possible enemy. When Tama finished her breathy explanation, she received a series of expressions she was already familiar with, as though Felucia's mushrooms had endeavored to grow directly from her head and face. During this time, Farr and Cyran returned with several hollowed bulbs sloshing with murky water, setting them beside the fire and awaiting the moment that the water could be set over the flames to be made potable.

Cyran provided Tama a welcome respite from the scrutiny when she jabbered something in Durese, directing her adamant sentences toward Nuri. Whatever she had said produced a shocked expression on the Zabrak's countenance, and she whirled on Farr. "You _drank_ it? Are you vapebrained?!"

Farr's enormous eyes narrowed, and he crossed his arms over his chest. "I fine. It not taste so bad. Not too different from water on Rodia."

Nuri shook her head as she sat back down. "Well, don't expect us to carry your _stoopa_ ass when you're rolling in the dirt with worms in your stomach."

Cyran set the hollowed bulbs near the fire, so that they would warm slowly, and bring the water to an eventual boil, instead of placing the liquid directly over the flames and thus risk setting their makeshift containers aflame. Farr gave Nuri a menacing glance, to which Nuri responded with one equally hostile, and the two divided their time between small talk with those immediately beside them and glaring vibroknives across the fire between them. The interruption did not last long, however, for almost every eye of those gathered turned to regard Tama again with measures of disbelief; the Twi'lek even received skeptical glances from Fenn and Farr, both of whom were apparently still unconvinced regarding Tama's Force-sensitivity. Or maybe they were naturally suspicious of things they could not easily comprehend or explain. Even Ashla's sunken eyes had risen from her feet to sneak furtive glances Tama's way, and the Twi'lek caught a small shiver of positivity and hope from the girl when they momentarily locked eyes. Tama wondered as to the girl's viewpoint and knowledge regarding the Force, for of the new companions they had gained, she seemed the least surprised to hear of Tama's connection to the Great Mystery. Indeed, learning about Tama's abilities appeared to have lifted her spirits slightly, which was all the motivation Tama needed to continue her explanation, and weather the suspicious queries levered her way.

Ossa, though skeptical herself, was still insistent upon badgering Tama with questions, a barrage of inquiries regarding all aspects of the Force, what it truly was, where it came from, whether she could learn the ways of the Force also. Tama answered as best she could, her eyes taking in the interested and judgmental visages of Vo-Yees, Vibak-Ol, and Farr. Eventually, at great urging from the annoying and insistent Nautolan, Tama summoned what little of her strength she could muster and called upon the Force, using it to levitate a small stone sitting to the side of their campsite and spinning it end over end for several lengthy moments. Though the use of the Force was taxing, Tama was heartened to find that the use of telekinesis was not as difficult as it had been for her back when she was training on Yanibar. The one positive side of all this tribulation and adversity was that her circumstances had necessitated her nearly complete reliance upon the Force simply to survive and stay sane, and so she was finding it easier to connect to all the time, even if it was still exhausting.

Tama let the rock fall to the moss below its hovering mass and mashed her face into her hands, gritting her teeth against the migraine shearing through her skull, the pain arcing all the way to the tips of her _lekku_. Nuri placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, and Tama began to feel better simply via proximity to her friend's unspoken encouragement and support. Though it did not eliminate a strange, pressing drone in the back of her mind, as though there were insects buzzing in her brain, so small she barely recognized they were there. She grimaced again as she forced herself to ignore it, chalking it up to some sort of stress-induced inconvenience.

The Gormak boy shifted closer when Ossa appeared to have finally exhausted her questions, and spoke for the first time that the Twi'lek had heard. Tama was not at all familiar with his species, but she had assumed that being a juvenile specimen, his voice would hold a child-like pitch and quality to it. So she was surprised when what emerged from his mouth was gravelly, like durasteel scraping across broken permacrete. He spoke Basic, but his accent was so overpowering, Tama initially assumed he was speaking another language. "'Ere yo get 'eapons?"

Ossa's attention flicked to the blasters Tama, Nuri, Farr, Fenn, and Cyran kept by their sides. "Yeah! Those are some wicked blasters! Where'd ya get 'em?"

"Some of our droid friends lent them to us," Nuri replied sarcastically as she squatted by the fire and inspected the meat. "They didn't need them anymore, so we thought it best not to waste firepower."

"We weren't able to find weapons," Vo-Yees squawked. "We found a stash of ration packs, yes. No blasters. Not even knives."

"We fight for our blasters," Farr explained proudly. "We kill droids, pick up blasters. Kill more droids with those blasters."

Fenn's ears twitched. "You make it sound like you took on all the Savior's droids by yourself."

"I kill many droids!" Farr proclaimed.

"Which was nothing compared to those destroyed by Tama's rancor and Nuri's exceptional aim. Give credit where it's due."

Farr had no immediate answers to that, and fortunately, he fell into a silence that was blissful for all involved. Vibak-Ol shifted closer, glaring at those armed with the weapons he was so interested in. "Need 'eapons too, yeah? Defend ourselfs."

Nuri produced the holdout blaster she had been carrying around, and offered the sidearm to the Gormak grip first. Vibak-Ol gave the weapon a sneer, but he took it anyway, apparently determining for himself that a small, weak weapon was better than none. Tama, still trying to ignore the strange sounds that flowed through her mind, almost coalescing into palpable whispers in her ears now, offered the E-5 she had procured from Otar's body to Ashla, hoping the blaster would offer the girl a small sense of safety she was dearly in need of. But the Togruta merely made a squeak that may have been a soft protest, and refused to take it from her. Ossa, however, gladly took the weapon, much to Vo-Yees' chagrin, and began examining every part of the blaster in such a flurried and carefree manner, Tama was convinced there would soon be another death, as a result of the girl's carelessness and inexperience, rather than the Savior's machinations.

Soon thereafter, the meat had come to an acceptable and edible heat, and Nuri and Cyran set about dividing the cooked slabs amongst all gathered, as the other children remained close to the fire, practically salivating in anticipation of their first true meal in well over a week. Tama, however, remained on the perimeter of the campsite, massaging her temples as her _lekku_ continued to jitter about her shoulders. What she had initially assumed to be a headache had actually become a feeling, something tangible and yet just out of reach, a sensation through the Force that was putting pressure upon her sinuses and producing a flurry of whispers in her ears. She ignored the beautiful smell of the prepared meat, the churning of her stomach, even the feeling of her fingers pressed against her temples, and focused solely on the feeling filtering through the churning miasma that was the Force on Felucia. It was like trying to find a dragon pearl at the bottom of a vat of Hutt slime, her hand groping blindly through the morass of the Dark Side, to single out the source of the exterior sensation. She could feel the Force responding to her reach, parting for her vanguard of concentration, stretching out to reach the growing strength of the unknown signal. A strand of familiar music suddenly trickled through her ears, dredging up memories of taxing training sessions in use of the Force, of long blizzards and cozy nights beside a small fire, of durni stew. Of laughter, tears, arguments, and friendly games of dejarik. She could feel her heart thudding throughout her entire body as her emotions soared with excitement. She reached further, and found contact with the questing feeling, the shred of consciousness that had been thrown across unknown distances through the galaxy, searching for the thing it most recognized, the person it called family.

Tentatively, wary of a trap upon the unseen mindscape, Tama let hope fill her as she reached for the other consciousness. _Foyim'buma?_

The other consciousness responded immediately, flooding their shared connection through the Force with pure light born of joy and hope. _Tamam'buma! I knew you lived! Tama! I'm here!_

Tama tried to picture the ledge, the city, the jungle and all the terrain features' relations to each other. She tried to communicate this information across the void to her sister, though the contact was already slipping, for Tama's mental hold on the Force was fading again, failing due to the exhaustion of both body and mind. She could no longer hold her contact with her sister, so she did her best to throw forth her emotions, to let her sister know that she yet lived, and she would continue to fight for her survival, no matter to cost. That they would find each other, be reunited once again, and the nightmare would be over. But even as she sent this into the Force, she felt no response from her sister. Her consciousness had fled out of reach, the Dark Side clouding both of their spiritual visions and severing their tie.

Tama snapped open her eyes to see the other children already greedily tearing into their strips of meat, while Nuri continued to caution them to eat slowly, lest they be sick. The Zabrak turned to the panting Twi'lek, to see her wide eyes and the open grin that was practically insane with joy splayed across her face. "What is it?" Nuri asked, concern evident in her tone.

Tama blinked, allowing her eyes to focus, though her vision was blurred by tears she had not believed she still had the moisture left to shed. "My sister. She's here. She's come for me." She reached forward and grabbed Nuri's hand, squeezing it tight as she whispered hoarsely. "I know how we're going to get offworld."


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Smoke poured into the sky, providing yet another layer of atmospheric obscurity for the high sun's rays to attempt to filter through in vain. With the smoke came the first flashes of flames licking up from the ruined drive engines of HAVw A5 Juggernaut's rear pair of wheels, which the lieutenant led the troopers directly under his command to desperately extinguish. The stench produced by the damage inflicted upon the heavy assault vehicle only added to the natural odors suffused by Felucia's spore-laden winds and hearty mushrooms, as well as those produced by the spilled blood in the mud, and the charred flesh of the bodies strewn across the bottom of the basin. The majority of the Felucian hunting party the Imperial party had discovered in heated battle with unknown individuals had been decimated by the excellent aim of the tank's gunners, as well as the Inquisitor and her own set of troops.

The Inquisitor stalked silently through the battlefield, her stride carrying her over the crumpled and battered corpses of the Jungle Felucians, her zeyd-cloth robes flapping about her thin but powerful armored limbs. She strode past the body of a rancor that had been struck multiple times with the laser cannons affixed to the heavy assault vehicle. There was a burn carved from the rancor's throat down to its groin, where her own Force lightning had electrocuted its tough hide, practically boiling it from inside. The sarlacc many meters away continued to groan and occasionally shriek, though its waving tentacles no longer ventured far from its gaping maw, curling close about the tower protruding from its fanged gullet. The tower represented the remnants of a giant stabilizer that had been constructed when the Empire had greater interests in maintaining control over Felucia, and mostly destroyed by the mysterious Jedi-killer who had been present on the world two years before. The majority of its flailing, grasping appendages had been severely burned or damaged beyond repair by the Inquisitor and her troops, assaulting them with Force lightning and heavy blaster weaponry whenever they dared to attack the Imperial contingent. They had inflicted such pain upon the unfortunate creature that it had finally had enough, and deigned to let the victorious Imperials walk across its skin and near its mouth unmolested.

The Inquisitor ignored the efforts of the lieutenant and his men and proceeded across the organic ground beneath her feet, avoiding the ulcerative pools of caustic pus leaking from the sarlacc's ill body. She strode toward a stretch of the otherworldly landscape where the heaviest fighting had occurred, littered with the bodies of Felucians, torn asunder by blasterfire, explosives, and Force powers. The Inquisitorium Dark Troopers that had accompanied her were standing guard around a trio of Felucians who had been stunned by concussion grenades and subsequently beaten into submission when their fury and strength in the Dark Side had allowed them to shrug off the sonic grenades' effects quicker than they should have been able to. The Felucians were kneeling in the mud, their clammy skin splattered with grime and blood, discolored by both the stripes of phosphorescent paint and ugly bruises. Two of the Felucians were larger than the last, their stripes a bright crimson in coloration, their masks and headdresses more elaborate than the simple covering worn by the third, who seemed to be a tribal Warrior, with blue paint and brief clothing. All three of the natives seethed in the Force, their features practically obscured by the dark miasma of colors leaking from their auras in the Inquisitor's sight. Most of those colors were dark, shivering as they rose from the Felucians' bodies as if marred by heat distortions, struck through with bright flashes of indigo, maroon, and violet. Upon seeing her approach, those colors darkened further, and the Inquisitor could practically taste their hatred on the back of her tongue. It was scrumptious.

The Devaronian stopped in front of the prisoners and dropped into a crouch, bringing herself to eye level with the primitives. This close to them, the power they were capable of commanding was intoxicating and encouraging. These were creatures naturally gifted with the Force, developing on a world that had one of the most unique spiritual ecosystem she had yet to encounter, ecosystems that had been discolored and disquieted by the Dark Side. And so they had long ago lost themselves to it, calling upon the darker aspect of the Force as much through instinct as through sheer will, their hatred, rage, and bloodlust all intertwining to form a coiled, insidious worm of destruction, disease, and devolution at the core of their souls. She found their affinity for the Dark Side fascinating and tantalizing; with some extensive training, they could be taught to better control and utilize their powers, to take full control over their own destinies.

She fixed her dark gaze on the pair of Felucians painted in garish scarlet colors. "You are the Shamans of your people, I presume?"

She got only grunts in response, as well as a series of small barks and guttural vociferations she could not translate. The scout beside the pair of shamans gave his own screech, his anger suffusing the space between them; one of the Dark Troopers struck the Felucian's shoulder with the stock of his heavy blaster rifle, eliciting a sharp crack and a cry of pain. The Inquisitor paid the action no heed, keeping her gaze upon the Shamans. "Here's another question: Who were those three you were so intent upon killing?"

The Felucian Shamans' faces were nearly impossible to read. They were too alien for her to pick up on their facial expressions, assuming they even used such a form of body language to communicate. One of the Shamans said something in a sequence of snarls and groans. The Inquisitor reached into the Force with tendrils of gold intent, attempting to divine the meaning behind the alien language, but the Shamans' thoughts were so vague, strange, and tumultuous, she could not make sense of them through her empathic abilities. Even so, there were means by which language barriers could be traversed, and they would need to be, if these creatures were going to be of any use to the Empire. To her.

She leaned forward, her gaze menacing, letting her presence in the Force swell with malice and threat, the dark colors surrounding herself reaching out like grasping claws of demonic spirits of the Dark Side to the natives before her. "We may not understand each other now, but understand this: we shall all be spending a great deal of time together in the near future. And you will come to comprehend me intimately."

The Felucians could not comprehend the Basic words she spoke, but they could feel the meaning behind them, her presence and power in the Dark Side. They could feel the threat she represented, one greater than themselves. They were powerful in the Force, but their usage of it was too instinctual and irrational. They could not match the abilities she could call upon, born of years of practice and experience. And so the threat they felt from her was palpable, and their reaction in the Force was a mixture of anger, fear, and helplessness. The two Shamans, recognizing a Force-user beyond their ability to combat held them fully within her grasp, were cowed, their heads lowering and their shoulders slumping in a gesture of forced deference. But the Felucian Warrior, barely sane to begin with, only regarded her threatening presence as a challenge, and with a sudden scream and a surge of the Force that knocked the closest Dark Trooper back from him, the scout leapt forward, the pseudopods of his primary arms stretching out for her throat. The Force gathered around those limbs as the screeching alien rushed for the Devaronian.

But the Inquisitor was not so easily surprised; both her training and supernatural senses had expected such an attack, and had foreseen it moments before it had occurred. Even as the warrior was leaping toward her, her palm came forward, the Force racing about and out from her in strands of gold and silver to arrest the Felucian's momentum midair. The Felucian gave a squawk of surprise and hatred as the Inquisitor gathered the Dark Side, bringing it to bear upon the very essence of the Felucian, letting the infinite energy of the Force streak through the very molecular structure of the struggling alien. The Felucian Warrior's grunts and barks became a shriek as the Inquisitor reached deep into the creature's physical form, sensing the somatic structure of the humanoid and bringing the full force of her terrible will upon it. The Felucian continued to scream long and loud as uncontrollable energy built within its cells, ripping through the atomic bonds that held it together. The Devaronian's open palm closed into a sudden and sharp fist, and the air split with the ripping sound of thunder as the Felucian exploded in a rain of bone fragments, slabs of painted flesh, and a tsunami of blood. The Shamans cringed as their comrade's remains soaked them completely, while the Dark Troopers standing guard and the Inquisitor did not even react as gore splattered their armor.

The Inquisitor stood, absentmindedly smearing the Felucian's thick blood over the ultrachrome surface of her armored breastplate, and heard a small gasp of shock from behind her. She turned her head to look back over her shoulder, to find the lieutenant, his sweaty uniform now spattered with blood, a slushy smear of gore that may have once been muscle stuck to his forehead. He wiped the gore from his face with a hand that shook uncontrollably, then swallowed so hard, she could see his larynx bobbing wildly. She was annoyed that her intense usage of the Force had blinded her momentarily to her immediate surroundings, thus allowing the Imperial officer to approach without her knowledge, and this showed in the biting snarl she levered his way. "What do you want, Lieutenant?"

He swallowed again, and fought hard to keep his voice from quavering. "A report, Inquisitor. Um...the A5 has been knocked out of...commission. It will require extensive repairs to the rear drive engines and wheels, if not full replacements." He glanced nervously in the direction of the sarlacc pit, which was far too close for his comfort. "Neither of which I believe we will be able to accomplish...here."

The Devaronian gave him a cold look. "Are you telling me we should abandon the Juggernaut?"

The lieutenant's aura colored with fear again. "I...yes, Inquisitor. I don't see any other way of getting it back to base...it won't drive anymore..."

The Inquisitor returned her attention to the pair of Shamans still kneeling before her. The one that had been closest to the deceased Warrior had eyes only for the smear of blood and viscera on the ground that had been their companion, while the other merely stared down at his knees, utterly defeated. Despite the news just given her, the Devaronian could not suppress a smile at the Felucians' expense. "Very well. Leave it here. Return to base, and take these two with you. Make certain they are kept under the tightest security. Some of my Dark Troopers will go with you to make certain they do not try anything as foolish as their friend just did."

She could feel the lieutenant's relief coloring his presence, which was soon overshadowed by the prospect of returning to the garrison's base in Kway Teow on foot. He cleared his throat again. "May I...may I inquire, Inquisitor, what you intend to do?"

The Dark Troopers guarding the pair of prisoners hauled them both to their feet, and began marching them back toward the Juggernaut, where the main force of stormtroopers and specialized squads had congregated. The Inquisitor turned to watch them, raising her hood over her sweat-slicked hair, despite the heat and humidity of the day, and began following them. The lieutenant hurried to catch up to her lengthy stride, in order to hear her next words. "I find myself curious as to the identities of the three individuals who these savages were trying so desperately to kill. Who called upon abilities of their own to neutralize our tank. The Force was strong with at least two of them, and I wish to know what offworlders are doing on Felucia during this time. I will be taking the rest of the Dark Troopers, Terror Troopers, and the Purge Trooper with me to find them."

The lieutenant nodded, regaining his composure the best he could. "You intend to hunt them down then, ma—Inquisitor?"

She gave him a predatory smile completely devoid of warmth or mirth. "It's what I do best, Lieutenant."

* * *

Vaevi scrambled back down the hoary hide of a mushroom stalk, using protrusions like tubular branches as supports for her grasping hands and quick, careful feet. She landed in the mud at the mushroom's base in a low squat, splattering her trousers with spore-heavy liquid, though she paid it no mind. She stood and levered a grimace at her two companions, who were expectantly awaiting her report. "I...have no idea where we are in relation to the path."

Foyi, who had been expecting as such but had been hoping for better news, deflated, allowing herself to slump against the bole of another massive growth of fungus. She grimaced as the motion produced pain in the multitude of lacerations and bruises across her body, then heaved a sigh. "So we are lost. _Karkin'_ natives. _Karkin'_ Imps!"

Rayf, who was similarly hurt and using his wan-shen to help support him in a standing position, sent her an eddy of encouragement and sympathy. "We're not lost, sweetheart. We're just...momentarily sidetracked."

The Iktotchi shook her head. "Oh, we're most definitely lost. I couldn't spot any recognizable landmarks when I climbed up there."

"You're not very positive, you know that, Vaevi?"

"I'm pragmatic. You hold hope in one hand and let an anooba piss in the other, and see which one fills up faster."

Rayf scoffed, though a slight grin did light his face. "You are _very_ colorful, though."

"I'm a bounty hunter. We're a colorful bunch."

Foyi fixed the Iktotchi with another hopeful expression. "Have you gotten anymore visions that might give us a clue as to where to go? Where to start looking, even?"

Vaevi spread her hands in a helpless but apologetic gesture. "I've had a few impressions here and there, but nothing noteworthy. Hell, kid, I didn't even see those Imperials in that blasted Juggernaut attacking us, and that was probably one of the most eventful things to ever happen to me. I think it's safe to say we can't rely on my prevalence for prescience, 'cause it's vague in the best circumstances. If I 'see' anything, I'll let you know." She pulled her C-10 Heavy Blaster Pistol and checked the charge on the power pack before ramming the weapon home in its holster. "What about you? The two of you know the Force...can you sense the younglings, or this Shepherd _murglak_?"

Rayf shook his head slowly before Foyi could reply negatively. "If we could, we would have probably found them by now. The Dark Side...clouds everything on this world. Even Foyi, with her close connection to her sister, and both of their Force-sensitivities, has only been able to sense her presence when close to the trail we were following."

"Which is why we were following it," Foyi added dejectedly. "I thought...it might lead us to her."

Vaevi peered through the few gaps in the canopy above, where the sun dared to pierce through the spores and cloying atmosphere. "Well, while we consider our options, I recommend we keep moving. Find another defensible position. We haven't put enough distance between us and those Imps for my tastes, considering we've most certainly jumped to the top of their kill list with your little maneuvers back there. That was a neat trick with the boulder back there, Foyi." The Iktotchi looked uncomfortable, and she turned to continue the trek through the jungles, murmuring over her shoulder. "And...with the sarlacc, too. Thanks for that..."

Foyi's only acknowledgment to her statements was a stiff nod, lost in her own dark thoughts of defeat and longing. She was finding it difficult to imagine the face of her sister, and she could feel fear swelling in her chest at that realization, fear that clambered up her esophagus and threatened to choke her with suppressed sobs. She stood and followed Vaevi's trail, though she was not actually looking where she was going, merely moving automatically. Rayf strode to her side and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "We'll find her, Foyi," he said in a hoarse voice. "Don't give up on Tama. I haven't, and I've never even met her."

Foyi allowed a small smile to curve her lips. "You would like her, I think. She would definitely like you. She like scoundrels and drifters and rocket jockeys."

Rayf chuckled. "Well, she sounds like more fun than you are."

Foyi responded to that with a light punch to his shoulder, but there was no strength to it. Her mood was gloomy, and she was having difficulty hanging onto hope. Rayf was simply trying to keep her spirits up. After all, feeling pity for oneself and doubt about her goals would not help her, and it would most definitely not help her sister. "Honestly, I've always thought she's a poor judge of character. Though now I think she might just see the good in even the most dangerous and aggravating of scoundrels."

"A rare skill to have. One that she didn't learn from her older sister."

"Would you like an injury on your mouth too?"

Rayf gave her a look of mock bewilderment. "But...how would I regale you with the sweet sound of my voice?"

"Silence is sweet too, you know."

"But then you'd be all glum and brooding, and that's not going to help anyone."

Foyi wanted to argue with that, but it was a fair observation, so she merely shrugged. "You already know me too well."

"I should. We are cousins, after all."

"We most definitely are not," Foyi replied vehemently. When he gave her a look between curiosity and hurt, she responded with a shy murmur. "I think...we've formed a bond that places us beyond calling ourselves cousins. It would be...weird."

Rayf considered that for a moment, as though it was worth deep contemplation. Then he broke into another grin. "What if I enjoy making things weird?"

Vaevi, who had been leading their trek through the jungle while Foyi and Rayf remained engaged in conversation, turned back to them with a stern scowl on her face. She was carrying her E-11s Sniper Rifle in her hands, holding it across her body in a ready position in case they ran across anymore surprise threats. "If you two could restrain yourselves from more heartwarming moments," she hissed, "maybe we can find a defensible place to camp and reconnoiter without alerting every creature that wants to kill us in this jungle."

Foyi bit her tongue sheepishly, feeling admonished, for the bounty hunter was correct. She had lost her focus for a moment, mostly due to Rayf's urging and her own need to distract herself from the despair that continued to plague her consciousness. She cast a sidelong glance at the Matukai Adept walking beside her, and he met her regard, cocking an eyebrow and flashing a rakish grin. Foyi kept her eyes resolutely forward, trying to ignore the smug satisfaction and feelings of mischievousness she empathically experienced rolling off Rayf's presence. By that time, Vaevi had turned around and set their pace at a brisk march, despite the lethargy and soreness in their limbs brought on by overexertion and the prevalence of lactic acid. But no one in the trio complained about the pace, nor how they longed for sustenance and sleep. They maintained their focus on the stated goal of finding a relatively safe place to camp, for they knew not how they would find Tama, the Shepherd, and the other prisoners. To think too far in the future would invite consideration of a quandary that they had yet to solve.

The day had already grown long and their forced march had carried them multiple kilometers before they found a place that met their specifications for a camp. The ground had become tumultuous and ragged the further they had traveled, steadily rising into a series of ridges and undulating heights, covered in moss and tangled mushrooms. One of those ridges ahead of them rose dozens of meters in the air, climbing into the sky in a steep outcropping of rock stretching high above the canopies of the jungle. A small grove of mushrooms and fungal stalks crowned the jagged peak of the ridge, and the thick vegetation provided ample means of climbing up to that peak, assuming one was properly motivated. Vaevi crested a lower hill and braced her sniper rifle against her shoulder, peering through the targeting scope up at the peak of the outcropping before them. "I don't see anything moving in those woods up there," she said in a low voice. "If we can get up there, they would make excellent cover. And we would have a hell of a view for klicks all around from up there."

Foyi let a gasp escape her lips as she attempted to regain her air. After the injuries she had suffered in recent weeks, both new and old, and the duration of the hike they had just conducted, she could barely stand up straight. "Maybe we could spot the trail again. Or at very least, some land feature we recognize."

The Iktotchi slung the weapon across her back and clambered over the ridge to approach the outcropping that demanded their attention. "My thoughts exactly."

The three of them reached the base of the jagged spire of rock without further comment, and fixated their attention on climbing up its slopes, using strands of fungus and thick clumps of moss to ascend at the points that were too steep to walk or crawl across. Despite the size of the outcropping and the distance of their climb, they reached the grove of mushrooms atop the spire of stone and slippery mud within several minutes, and the sun, what little they could see of it through the roiling clouds and persistent haze on the horizon, still shone through the grove's canopy in patches of dim illumination. The wind whistled through the fungal stalks and stacked, bulbous fungi at this height, while darker clouds in the distance rumbled like the sonic violations created by starships in reentry. Rayf peered through the gaps of the fungal trunks at the brooding sky. "Storm's coming. Judging by the wind speed, we're probably all going to be miserable shortly after nightfall."

Vaevi shrugged as she began clearing a small area of stone upon which they could establish a campsite. "I've never minded the rain myself."

Foyi squatted down within the cleared area, reaching deep within the murky waters of her consciousness to find her calm center. She stilled her breathing, forcing it to be drawn slowly through her lungs in order to counteract her fatigue. "I've lived with Yanibar's storms all my life. I think I'll be fine."

Rayf cracked an easy grin. "We'll see when you're getting soaked through. In my experience, most people despise sitting out in the rain."

"In _my_ experience, most people don't plan accordingly," Vaevi responded as she dug through her pack. She extracted a small packet not much larger than her fist, which appeared to be a folded contraption of polyskin and a small frame of flexisteel. "Fortunately for you two whining squalls, I'm not most people." She placed the packet on the rock before her, pressed her fingers on a seal along the edge, then stepped back as the packet began to unfold itself into a conveyance of articulated ribs and stretched, semi-transparent polyskin; each time the device unfolded, it grew larger, and took a more defined, geometric shape. When the device had completed the process of enlargement, it had transformed into a small, four-sided tent with a slanted roof and an entrance that could be sealed against the elements. "It's meant for two, but I'm sure all three of us can use it if we don't mind being a little cozy."

Rayf shifted glances between both the Twi'lek and Iktotchi, his rakish grin never leaving his face. "Getting cozy with two ravishing women? I don't mind at all."

Foyi let out a snort of derision. "I think I'd rather just sit out in the rain." The idea made her uncomfortable, certainly, though she could not deny a small part of her finding Rayf's suggestion appealing as well.

Vaevi, however, did not seem the least bit amused. "I'm old enough to be your mother, flyboy."

Rayf shrugged. "I'm not picky."

"Your kind usually aren't."

"And what exactly do you mean by my kind?"

"Spacers," Vaevi spat, as though the word were an expletive.

Foyi turned her attention from her bickering counterparts and walked to the edge of the outcropping, peering out over the sea of jungles stretching out as far as she could see, which was not always to the horizon, due to the gathering thunderheads and infrequent mists of spores and thickened water vapors. She stood on the lip of the edge and breathed deeply of the sickening air, sweeping her gaze all about her in an attempt to espy structures or terrain features she might recognize. But the distances she could perceive were hazy and circumspect at best, the rising and falling of the terrain blooming with random protrusions of fungi, or bisected by trails of dark, sludgy water that were usually only recognizable at this distance by the sun glinting off their waves. She let out another sigh, only this one was born of despair, and dejectedly, she turned back to the campsite and dropped into a cross-legged sitting position. She looked up at both Rayf and Vaevi, her eyes drooping with both exhaustion and sadness, though ultimately she was too tired to even realize she was bereft of hope. "I don't see anything out there that I recognize. I can't place our position relative to where we were. If only we hadn't run across those Felucians...or those Imperials..."

Rayf shrugged, though she understood that he was similarly despondent. "There's not much we could've done...the path led right through that valley, the sarlacc, and the ruins of that Felucian town. And we all know the Empire has no love for Felucians, or Force-users who don't fall under their strict doctrines. A conflict was regrettably inevitable."

Vaevi also sighed as she dug some travel rations from her pack. "Force-crazed natives...Stormies and Jedi-hunters...no bounty's worth this."

Rafy gave her an even stare. "You're right, you know. The bounty on the Shepherd is considerable, but it hardly seems worth the risks you've already taken. I don't wanna sound like I'm trying to cut you out of any potential rewards, Vaevi, but Foyi and I are here to rescue her sister, and we're prepared to risk everything for that. We don't care about credits; we only care about getting her, and the Shepherd's other victims, home to their families and bringing this Hutt-licker to justice. You've been an invaluable help to us so far, but we would be remiss to expect you to do anything more for us. Not if you're unwilling to risk everything."

Vaevi gave him a severe look, but there was no steel behind it. She glanced back down at the rations laying uneaten in her palms, then placed them back in the case they had been kept in. "Today, both of you have saved my life, and you have been forthcoming regarding your intentions and goals here. It's time for me to return the favor; you've earned that much." She turned to face both Foyi and Rayf, and the pain and anguish, the old wound that had lurked just beneath the woman's mercenary facade, was no longer hidden, but displayed prominently upon her face. Her emotions had gone from stilled and suppressed to a dark sea of undulating, foaming waves, and the unresolved pain that radiated from her was an unexpectedly frigid splash against Foyi's extrasensory perceptions.

"The truth is," the Iktotchi began in a grim voice, looking down at the stone beneath her again, "I wasn't always a bounty hunter. I used to be a migrant worker, moving from job to job within the fuel export industries on Malastare, until I met the man I would later marry and have younglings with, and for awhile, I focused all my time and effort on raising our children, while he provided credits and shelter for our family." She quirked a wistful smile. "It wasn't the life you see in the holos, but for awhile, it was nice, and...I was happy." She brought her hands to her eyes and rubbed them, while her voice became more strained as she attempted to continue her story with an even tone. "I'm not just here for the bounty; actually, I could really care less about the credits. I'm here for the Shepherd."

"Why?" Foyi dared to ask, suspecting the story behind her motivations was an agonizing one, but she prompted its continuation anyway.

"I think this monster who calls himself 'the Shepherd' was once my husband."

Whatever Foyi or Rayf had expected to hear from her, it had been nothing close to that. Both human and Twi'lek shared incredulous glances before looking back at the Iktotchi, who continued to hide her eyes behind her palms. "Your...husband?" Rayf asked unnecessarily, merely to cut through the tension rife within the air. "What makes you think that?"

Vaevi removed her hands, revealing eyes bloodshot with unshed tears and internal pain, though her gaze had become murderously cold. "The methods used by 'the Shepherd', how he preys upon children and the similarities between all his victims. They're all hallmarks of an insane mind, one born of an experience I am only too familiar with." She paused for several moments, struggling with the anguish that rose within her as she dredged up old memories. Neither Foyi nor Rayf said a word as they waited patiently for her to continue her tale, to provide clarity to a mystery regarding the identity and motivation of their enemy.

Vaevi sighed, her eyes no longer meeting theirs as she stared off into a past event only she could see. "Mind you, I didn't knowingly marry a sociopathic murderer. When I first met him, he was charming, hardworking, and had an unusual but refreshing sense of morality, considering he eked a tenuous living out as a gambler, bookie, and organizer for the podracers. He dealt with all manner of scum and villainy, from pretentious podracers like Sebulba or Durundo, to even the crimelords such as Sebolto and Gardulla. Yet, he prided himself in never becoming too involved, keeping himself beholden to a higher moral authority, keeping apart from their depravities and shady dealings. It created a lot of stress on him, but the profitability of the industries he worked in allowed him to maintain a good home and get all the supplies he needed. A life he was only too willing to share, and I must admit, I found him attractive, intriguing, and the life he lived exciting. We were married within a year of meeting each other, and it was not long after that we decided to start a family."

"What was...is his name?" Foyi asked when the Iktotchi paused for a lengthy period of time.

Vaevi waved a dismissive hand. "He calls himself 'the Shepherd' now, but when I met him, he was fine with his birth name, Arctan Xieesi." She gritted her teeth, as though uttering his name aloud inflicted even greater pain upon her.

"You had two children together," Rayf surmised, his tone concerned. "A boy and a girl, right?"

Vaevi nodded, and the agony rippling out from her presence was stifling. "You're smarter than you look, flyboy. They were the joys of our lives, and for a time, we were truly happy. Or so I thought," she added gruffly. "With the arrival of our children and the expansion of our family, I ceased working to raise our children, which put a greater burden on Arctan and the money he made, which wasn't always so reliable. We were fine with a fraction of the credits Arctan was earning for our family, but the stress of the jobs he took and trying to provide for a young family began to affect him in terrible ways. I tried time and again to convince him that we were fine, that we had all the money we needed, that I wasn't the Queen of Naboo and didn't require a fancy palace and all the credits in the Mid Rim, but he became only more worried and obsessed with bringing in more and more credits. The stress of his work and that which he placed on himself soon put him in a foul mood on his best days; he began to see myself and our kids as the source for all his frustrations and stressors. It wasn't until...after...that I discovered he was deeply in debt to multiple disreputable individuals and organizations, which was the reason he worked in the organizations and industries he did, all in an attempt to pay off gambling debts that only grew larger due to his obsession with betting on the podraces and the sabacc table, all in an attempt to make one large score that would pay off all his debts in one fell swoop.

"Needless to say, he hid this all from me, no matter how often I attempted to determine what was actually putting so much stress on him. He was always a stronger telepath than I ever was, so I could read almost nothing off his mind, even when I concentrated my damnedest to do so. Which I didn't do often, as it would only anger him further than he already was. As Arctan became more convinced that his wife and younglings were at fault for all his woes, he took to spending greater periods of time away from us at his jobs, or at the local pubs, where he drowned his stress in lomin ale and Novanian grog. Only when he was properly drunk would he come home, and take out his frustrations on his family. If we argued with him or did even the slightest thing to anger him, he would lash out with rage so great, it was like I found myself suddenly married to a complete stranger. At first, his abuses were verbal in nature, calling us names, cursing us, screaming at us to leave him alone until he slept off his inebriation and the resultant hangover. After, he would apologize, and tell me and our children how much he loved us, and that he had just had a bad day. Like fools, I believed he was still the man I had married, and I accepted his apologies. I should have taken it as a clear sign to leave him and take my children as far away from Malastare as possible."

The dimming light was suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning, followed by a growling crack of thunder that momentarily split the sky. Foyi jumped at the sudden light and cacophony, having been so intent upon the bounty hunter's tale that she had lost track of her external environment. Vaevi paid it no heed other than a momentary glance upward. She returned her attention to Rayf and Foyi, her voice hard as phrik as she continued. "As you might guess, it wasn't long before Arctan's anger manifested into physical abuse as well. If one of our children talked too loudly while he was trying to sleep, or even asked him to spend some time with them, he would become livid, and sometimes, he would slap them, or even punch them. When I tried to intervene, he would turn his fists and feet against me. Which was fine, as long as he wasn't beating on our children."

"It's not fine," Rayf interjected. "There was no reason for him to beat you."

Vaevi gave him a wry smile that held no levity. "Not according to him. By the time he started beating us, he stopped apologizing, and just blamed us for his foul temper, for his drinking, for his gambling debts. Our home became a prison lorded over by his wrath and blame. What was worse, some part of him must have realized what a worthless pile of bantha _poodoo_ he'd become, but instead of trying to amend that, he let his sense of morality become entangled in his abuse. He began to see every action he took, or we took, as moral ones, and when he didn't like something we did, he felt compelled to 'punish us for our sins'. Like he was God of the Universe or something. This only compounded the stress he already felt, which compelled him to drink more, which in turn caused him to dole out violent punishment upon my children and myself almost constantly. I and my children began to dread when he was home, and I suspected that Arctan had lost his grip on reality at that point, though I didn't really see it at the time. I'm ashamed to say that my own anxieties regarding my family's survival and money prevented me from removing my children from our hostile home life, but eventually, I woke up to the danger and made preparations to hop a freighter offworld and take my children as far from their worthless father as I could."

Vaevi let out a shaking breath, and her voice had taken on a noticeable quaver as she spoke. "But the night before the shuttle I had booked was to take off, and take us away from Malastare, my children took the stash of alcohol Arctan kept in the house and dumped it outside. They didn't tell me about it, and wish they had, as I could have stopped them, maybe even predicted what would happen next...When Arctan came home, more drunk than I had ever seen him, and smelling of ryll, he was already in a furious mood, and when he discovered what our children had done in an attempt to stop his tirades and anger...he _killed them_."

Foyi grimaced, expecting the words the despondent Iktotchi had uttered, but finding it painful still. Rayf's expression tightened as he peered at the bounty hunter. "I'm sorry, Vaevi."

Vaevi's voice was thick with emotion as she continued, but her hand waved to indicate she had not finished. "The loss of my children to...Arctan's anger was awful; it's a pain I feel to this day, every waking moment. But that—that wasn't even the worst of it. It was _how_ he killed them...it was the most bonechilling thing I've ever seen, and it still haunts me." She looked up at them with an intense, searching stare. "It was the first time I saw the Force in use."

Both Foyi and Rayf's brows shot up, but it was the human who uttered the question on both of their minds. "He killed them using the Force?"

Foyi could feel the blood in her veins running cold. If "the Shepherd" was truly Vaevi's former husband and the individual in question was Force-sensitive, Tama may be in even more danger than she had at first assumed. Particularly if she was at the mercy of a Force-user who actually chose to make his home and base of operations on a world so rampant with the Dark Side. "The Shepherd is a Force-sensitive?"

Vaevi nodded. "I believe this creature was once my husband, and my husband could use the Force. Though I don't believe even he knew he was capable of it till that moment. But the negative aspect of the Force you call the Dark Side already had a hold on him by then, motivating his anger and cruelty, building within him until he became the kind of monster that would willingly kill his children." She turned her face away, swiping her palm against her eyes for a moment, removing welling tears that were born more of the boiling rage within her presence, rather than the open sore of grief at the center of her being. "I admit...I was too afraid, and felt powerless to do anything as I watched him raise his hands in anger. The air seemed to be pulled directly from my lungs and our whole house felt like it was shaking. I watched, soundlessly screaming, as my children crumpled before him, as he seemed to grow more aware, stronger as they withered before my very eyes. They wasted away in moments, and Arctan seemed to _enjoy_ their suffering and slow deaths, seemed to gain new strength from their deaths. When they fell dead at his feet, there was a moment when Arctan had become an entirely different being altogether. I can't touch the Force myself, but I saw and felt the Dark Side that day, and I think Arctan finally understood what kind of monster he had become, and accepted it. I still remember him looking down at the bodies of the children we had had together with a cold expression, and then looked at me, and told me that 'they had been punished for their sins'.

"I left that very day. I couldn't stay in that house anymore, and with my children gone and my husband unrecognizable, there was nothing left for me on Malastare. I wanted justice for my lost children, but I was too afraid to go against Arctan, who had become something I feared, something I couldn't comprehend. In my pathetic fear, I believed that Arctan would hunt me to the ends of the galaxy, so I changed my name and tried to forget my previous life. I spent the Clone Wars moving back and forth through the Outer and Mid Rims, working any job that would allow me to keep hidden, under the scanners.

"It wasn't until the Galactic Empire that I began hearing rumors of this 'Shepherd' killer. At first, they were only rumors, legends that were intermixed with such figures as Lord Nyax and the Ghost Jedi of Mrlsst. But then, I began having...visions, sometimes vivid ones, suggesting that I would come into contact with this Shepherd, or sometimes visions of his victims and even their deaths. I began researching all the legends and news I could find regarding the Shepherd, while at the same time teaching myself how to become a warrior and gunslinger, in order to defend myself if need be. As I gathered more information about this killer, I had a feeling that I can't explain, that I somehow knew who this killer was, that I had some connection to him I didn't yet understand. I started looking for patterns amongst the victims I studied, and found them strangely and sickeningly familiar."

"How so?" Rayf asked.

But it was Foyi who provided the answer, recalling what Vaevi had related to them regarding the conditions and similarities amongst the victims. "You're children...when they died...your son was twelve, and your daughter was fourteen, right?"

Vaevi nodded sadly. "That's what triggered my suspicions that Arctan had something to do with these killings. In his own sick, twisted way, I figured he was trying to atone, or justify, or recreate the deaths of his own children. He's...reliving their murders, over and over again. If he had any sanity before he started calling himself 'the Shepherd', he must have lost it now. I can't begin to fathom his reasons or his actions."

"So you're not here for credits," Rayf surmised, rubbing the hairs on his chin. "You're here for vengeance."

"I'm here for answers," the bounty hunter snarled. "I want to see Arctan again, and I want him to explain why he killed our children. I want him to explain to me _how_ he killed our children."

"I might have an answer for that," Rayf answered quickly. "From the way you described it, it sounds like he used some sort of Force Drain. It's an ability that allows a Force-user to leech the vitality from their victim to strengthen themselves. There are many different uses and versions of it, but the most powerful ones drain so much life energy from another, that the victim dies."

"That might explain the state the bodies of the other children you studied were in," Foyi suggested. "Maybe he makes himself stronger, or at least thinks he does, by using the Force to drain their life essences."

Another flash of lightning skittered through the sky overhead, chased by a crack of thunder that sent vibrations through the ragged, moss-covered stone beneath their feet and haunches. Foyi paid it no heed as she turned to Rayf, her face etched with barely-controlled fear. "We need to find that path again. Now. We can't leave Tama, or any other kids he may have, in the clutches of a Darksider."

"How do you propose we do that?" the bounty hunter asked skeptically. "None of us have any idea where we are. Telemetry scans of the surface aren't going to help us if we can't even pinpoint our position on the charts we have, which are less than reliable, and that's being generous."

Rayf glanced at the Twi'lek. "You could try reaching out in the Force again. You and Tama are close sisters; your connection to each other is strong. If you focus hard enough, you might be able to reach her."

Foyi shook her head. "I already tried that, remember? I could barely sense her presence, and only in close proximity to that trail." She waved a hand above her head, indicating the jungle around them, the world as a whole. "It's this place. It's so strong in the Dark Side, it's difficult to sense anything past it."

Rayf lifted himself from the slimy surface of the crag enough to scoot himself closer to her, so that the human and Twi'lek were seated facing each other, their crossed feet within mere centimeters of each other. He reached out and took her hands in his own and held her gaze. "Then let me help you. Let us share our power, our focus, our connection to the Force. With our combined strength and your connection to Tama, maybe together we can find her together."

Foyi looked down at her hands in his, feeling the callouses and roughened contours formed from years of wielding a wan-shen for both offense and defense. Her initial reaction was to pull away in surprise, to relieve the sense of discomfort that came with having him so close physically to her. But she could not deny that she found his offer heartwarming, as it was an option she had not considered, and would not have asked him to assist her in such a way. She tightened her grip on his hands, using the tactile contact, the heartbeat she could feel in the veins of his fingers and palms, as a focus as she delved deep into the depths of the Force. She let go of her personal emotions and sensations, filtered out the sounds of the grumbling sky, the wind through the fungal stalks, the feeling of the damp stone beneath her posterior. She imagined the waters of the Force being poured through the top of her head, filling the empty vessel of her body that she had prepared for it. As she called upon the powerful liquid, she began to feel the serene and gentle presence of Rayf before her. He was no longer a physical construct sitting directly in front of her, but an amorphous matrix of life essence that seeped into her own, his mind mixing with her consciousness, the separate waters of their existences intermingling to form a single entity in the Force. Their thoughts began to mold together, stray ideas from Foyi sliding into gaps in the thinking processes of Rayf, and vice versa. Foyi saw scraps of memories that were not hers, felt suppressed and smoothed emotions from Rayf, but she pushed past this miasma that threatened to swallow her concentration, instead focusing upon the human's strength in the Force and drawing upon it. She reached down into the warm, gentle waves of Rayf's consciousness, letting his connection to the Force reach out into her own, bolstering both simultaneously. Foyi felt momentary surprise to find how deeply attuned to the Force he truly was, how integral the limitless seas of energy were to his very existence, his Matukai training urging him to keep every aspect of his being balanced with the Unifying Force. Despite the fact that he rarely called upon the Force for direct and supernatural external effects upon his environment, and his apparent deficiency in telekinetic aspects, he had a mature and fathomless understanding of it. For him, the Force was not a resource he dipped into at will, but a constant companion, a lifeline that kept him sane and collected, that reinforced his attempts to remain himself, to keep hold of his identity within a galaxy that forced him to pretend to be something he was not. She felt loneliness, feelings of dejection and abandonment, longing for days and times past, buried beneath his mask of mischievousness and nonchalance. But most of all, she felt his commitment to the rescue of Tama, to the reunion of the separated sisters. His commitment to the Twi'lek with which he shared his thoughts, feelings, and sensitivity to the Force.

Foyi was tempted to linger on those feelings, to explore them, to offer her own reciprocal emotions, but there was a slight insistence from the human, a quiet reminder of why they had initiated the meld in the first place. Foyi sharpened her focus again, extricating herself from Rayf's mind enough so that she no longer grasped his stray thoughts, but rather drew upon his own connection to the Force; it was like dipping into a secondary ocean, an expansion of the depths she was familiar with when calling upon the Force. She gathered the warm and scintillating waters about her, and used them to cast her consciousness out from herself, to reach far beyond her physical form and pierce through the murky, pounding waves of the Dark Side all around her. The tainted lights of life essences arose like stars all around her, but she swam past them, her mind touching them each in turn in a brief and blazing fast contact as she searched them in turn for signs of familiarity. But she found nothing that felt remotely like her sister's presence, and she realized quickly that if she continued in such a way, she would exhaust herself remaining so deeply submerged in the Force.

She felt a suggestion from Rayf, more of a sensation than any direct communication. She gave the telepathic equivalent of her assent, and together, they changed their extrasensory perceptions from a wide and piecemeal search, to a call that echoed through the Force, like a shout radiating out for untold distances from both her and Rayf. As one, they both focused on sending the call out across the world, letting their mental signatures radiate through the Living Force on Felucia, slipping through the gaps of infrequent and virulent Dark Side taint. Foyi wished to strive further, to follow that call with waves of specific intent, but the call itself was exhausting enough to produce. She could only wait and hope that Tama would sense her insistence within the Force and respond.

Then, as sudden as the lightning that flashed above them, ignored by the pair of melded Force-users, an eddy of thought bisected the ripples Twi'lek and human spread from their combined minds. With that ripple came specific, sentient thought that coalesced into comprehensible words in a telepathic voice that Foyi knew as well as her own. _Foyim'buma?_

Foyi no longer restrained her emotions, latching onto the shred of consciousness that represented her sister as though holding to a safety cable attaching her to the exterior of a starship in deep space. Joy, relief, and longing surged through her all at once, undoubtedly enough to overwhelm Tama's telepathic presence, but she could no longer restrain herself, she was so enthusiastic to be in contact with her sister again, even if it was from great distance. She called out to her sister again, trying to communicate images and sensations of where she was on the planet, though this was difficult, considering she had no relative landmarks that both sisters could reference to in order to gauge physical distances from each other.

 _Tamam'buma! I knew you lived! Tama! I'm here!_

Even as Foyi shouted these words with all her telepathic might, she could already feel the tendril of sentience that was her long-lost sister withdrawing, sinking beneath the muddy waters of the Dark Side. But even as it was disappearing and Foyi swam deeper to catch hold of it, her mind was suddenly filled with smells of cooking meat, the stench of spores and alien body odors, the sounds of rising wind and a crackling fire. Her mind's eyes were greeted to a kaleidoscope of random images of fungal stalks, of a dark and foreboding jungle stretching out through the haze and dim sunlight. These images of the jungle displayed some measure of sight of the trunks and stalks, but mostly the caps of gargantuan mushrooms and the canopies of the forests, suggesting they had been conveyed from a vantage point above the majority of the jungle around Tama. The last of the images confirmed this assumption on Foyi's part, granting her a view of a relatively level ridge upon which sat several unfamiliar individuals Foyi only had a brief and hazy regard of, though all were of juvenile ages. The ridge upon which Tama apparently sat was merely one tiered height of a large hill, much of its sheer slopes covered in thick fungal foliage as it soared above the observer's head into the windswept fog of spores above.

Foyi, feeling the contact slipping away and becoming lost within the tainted Force and choppy sea of life essences, drew as much as she could from her own sensitivity to the Force, and that offered her by Rayf, all in order to maintain the feeling of Tama's presence. But her efforts were foiled when the external environment intruded upon her focus, as the explosive report of a blaster bolt assaulted her ears. Rayf withdrew from the meld immediately in alarm, forcing Foyi to surface from within herself. Her eyes snapped open, and the dimming light, the waving fungi, and the whistles of the wind growing in intensity became a briefly disorienting onslaught of sensation. Cursing whatever had broken her contact with Tama both inwardly and aloud, she looked up to see that Rayf had sprung to his feet, his wan-shen seemingly slapping itself together in his blurred hands as he swiveled his head about, looking for threats. Her gaze was drawn to Vaevi, who crouched at the edge of the precipice, her E-11s Sniper Rifle braced against her shoulder as she peered through her targeting scope. Without looking at either one of them, she discharged a shot over the edge at something unseen in the jungle below.

Foyi rose to her feet, and with a flick of her wrist, her discblade emerged from its sheathe and found her waiting fingers. She trotted to the edge beside the bounty hunter at the same time Rayf did, and as one, the pair of them crouched to either side of Vaevi as she fired another shot. The trio leapt back as a fusillade of answering blaster bolts chewed into the rock of the lip, sending up shards of red-hot stone and fragments of slippery mushrooms. "Stang!" Vaevi cursed, looking down at her sniper rifle to check the charge, then slapping a new power pack into it to recharge it.

"What's going on?" Rayf asked calmly, but Foyi could see how taut every muscle in his body was, ready to propel him into action at a moment's notice.

"Stars and galaxies!" Vaevi exclaimed. "I've been yelling at you two to wake up for five minutes already! We've got unpleasant company advancing on the cliff!"

"More Felucians?" Rayf queried, craning his neck to peer over the edge.

"With _blasters_?! Try again!"

Foyi brought a hand to her face and let loose a string of vitriol that had even Rayf grimacing. "It's the Imps and their Jedi-hunter, isn't?!"

Another slew of blasterfire struck the edge of the precipice just as Vaevi had crept forward to line up another shot, forcing the Iktotchi back. "What makes you think that?" she snarled bitterly.

Rayf suddenly spun around to face the opposite end of the precipice, where the cliff sloped back down into the tangled jungle below, brandishing his wan-shen at the same time Foyi's danger sense shrieked at her to turn around. She spun on her heels in time to see a hulking figure charging through the trunks of the mushrooms gracing the top of the ridge, a massive biped encased in thickened, black armor that held a fearsome similarity to the armor worn by stormtroopers. But the skull-like mask contained a visor mimicking empty sockets that were ghoulishly exaggerated in size, the pauldrons of the armor enormous and stacked upon pieces of plating that must have weighed a prohibitive number of kilograms. The trooper clutched a ferocious heavy repeating blaster rifle in its overlarge hands, swinging the barrels of the weapon up as it approached, the weapon whining as it spooled up to unleash a hail of laserfire.

On instinct, Foyi reached out with her telekinesis and gripped one of the thick boles of mushrooms the monstrosity was passing, pulling the gnarled fungus to the side so that it slapped heavily against the trooper. The trooper staggered to the side, its balance momentarily ruined, while its fouled aim sent a fusillade of bolts slicing through the air, passing within centimeters of both Foyi and Vaevi. The bounty hunter took advantage of its loss of equilibrium and discharged a trio of bolts into the trooper's chest and torso, the sniper blasts cutting deep gouges in the armor and staggering the trooper further. But the trooper made a strange, echoing, digitized noise through its vocoder and struggled to get back to its feet, hardly affected by either Foyi or Vaevi's attacks.

It was Rayf who found an effective weapon against the hulking trooper, for he had stabbed his wan-shen bladefirst into the thick carpet of moss, where he could retrieve it quickly, so that he could pull the VES-700 Pulse Rifle from his back. The trooper had just risen back to its knees, swinging its heavy repeating blaster toward them, when Rayf triggered the weapon in his hands, and a bright flash of energy emerged from the end of the weapon in a wave that struck the trooper and sliced through its armor like a cutting torch. The trooper disappeared in a shroud of billowing smoke as most of its torso armor melted into slag, even as the Pulse Rifle's ammunition veritably cut the trooper in half. The trooper gave a keening, grinding screech that trailed off into static as it fell in pieces, the melted, jagged slashes in its armor exuding showers of sparks and dark smoke. Foyi belatedly realized the trooper was some sort of combat droid, albeit a frightening one.

The smoldering remains of the droid surrendered to gravity and began to roll back down the slope of the cliff from which it had ascended. But there were more figures clambering up behind it, stepping over the tumbling pieces as they ascended, moving in a quick and hostile group made of more droids of similar manufacture. One of those droids was taller but not quite as bulky as the first they had encountered, a menacing, compact missile launcher affixed to its shoulder, and a scintillating energy shield upon its arm. As the droids approached, they were further accompanied by more figures, scrambling up the slope in darting, stalking movements that grimly reminded Foyi of voorcats, the dull sheen of their armor flickering with the infrequent lightning overhead. They wore masks that were similarly skull-like in appearance, but with a barely humanoid design, their breath coming in short, ragged gasps through their respirators.

Foyi, Rayf, and Vaevi backed up swiftly from the approaching group of foreboding Imperial units, all of whom were aiming their wicked weapons, though none had yet opened fire, regarding the trio with more caution than the previous war droid had. The three companions backed away, until only the edge of the cliff separated them from the open air beyond. They would be forced to fight, unless they found some way to survive a drop of well over a dozen meters into the forests below. Vaevi kept her sniper rifle swinging back and forth, though she was hesitant to fire, for her previous shots had been hardly effective against the first droid to assault them. Foyi tucked her discblade into her belt and pulled her disruptor rifle, while Rayf continued to keep his Pulse Rifle trained on the group. Neither side was willing to begin firing at the moment, leaving them all at an impasse on the peak of the crag, the tense silence between the combatants broken only by the sounds of the ululating thunder above.

Foyi, her mind still focused on the fact that she had just been in contact with her sister that she seemed to have been separated from for so egregiously long, let frustration suffuse her form, even as she called upon the Force once again to aid her in battle. She raised her voice over the sound of rising speed and cacophony of the wind. "What do you want?!"

The droids, having crested the top of the crag and arranging themselves on the relatively level surface, said nothing, merely locking their knees and aiming their heavy weapons at their three enemies backed against the ledge. The slinking troopers with the grotesque masks and durasteel talons attached to their fingers paced back and forth, never drawing within a few meters of the human, Twi'lek, and Iktotchi arrayed against them as though there were an invisible wall bisecting the ledge. They rubbed the talons upon their gloved hands together, making screeching, metallic sounds that caused Foyi's _lekku_ to twitch involuntarily with apprehension. They remained silent.

Foyi was about to call out to them again, when a voice arose from somewhere behind the droids and disquieting troopers, an effeminate tone filled with deadly confidence and assured command. "To speak with you. Preferably the two of you who can feel the true power in this galaxy, even if you don't yet fully call upon it."

The troops, both droids and humanoids, parted to provide passage for a woman who was obviously their leader, based on the aura of command she suffused by her mere appearance. She was a Devaronian, what little skin she exposed covered in thick fur of silver and white, a pair of faded circles gracing her forehead where horns would grow in male individuals of her species. Her features were gaunt, cruel and hawkish in appearance, her mouth filled with sharp teeth that gave her depreciating smile a leering snarl. She armored herself with plates of ultrachrome, over which fluttered thick, maroon robes of zeyd-cloth. Dangling from around her neck was some form of amulet fashioned from a roughly circular shape that evoked an organic scale made of an unrecognizable, pearlescent material reflecting the scattered lights of the lightning flashing through the atmosphere. She appeared to have no weapons upon her person, her gloved hands swinging languidly at her side.

But it was not the woman's appearance that was so worrisome, nor the way her dark eyes seemed to pierce her quarry to their souls, nor even the hungry gleam to her expression, as though she were sizing them all up for her next meal. Her very existence seemed unnatural, for try as Foyi might, she could not sense the woman before her in the Force. It was not a trick of the Dark Side, a blanket of shadows and obscurity that made it nearly impossible to register her presence within the radius of her expanded consciousness. It was as though the woman had been cut off from the Force completely, or even been born devoid of it entirely. Foyi knew this to be impossible, for she had witnessed the woman standing upon the Imperial heavy assault vehicle, had seen lightning born of the dark energies of the Force powerful enough to subdue the immense and terrible sarlacc. She had to be a Force-user, and a powerful one at that, and so her presence in the Force would have had to be noteworthy, a dark ridge rising above the oceans, the waves of the Force crashing all about her, her mere existence forcing even more waves and ripples. The Devaronian woman must have sensed her bewilderment, for she gave Foyi an impish smile that would have been playful on any other face, though it was twisted into a sneer on hers.

She felt a sudden, icy current strike her awareness from Rayf's direction, and she snuck a glance to her companion to see an expression of utter shock upon his face, shock outlined by recognition as he looked upon the Inquisitor. Vaevi had eyes only for the Devaronian woman, her targeting laser coming to rest on the plate of armor just above where her heart should be. "You want to talk? Lose the stormies and keep your distance, and maybe we can all sit down for a civilized conversation."

The Inquisitor gave the Iktotchi a glare that could melt duranium. "I think not, bounty hunter. My mandate does not involve one so insensitive as you, though you must still answer for your part in crimes against the Empire. For that, my troops will stay; I've neither the time nor the patience to deal with you personally." Her gaze shifted again, resting upon Rayf, and for a moment, there was a flicker of recognition in that gaze as well, prompting a self-assured smile to her thin lips. Her eyes then slid to rest on Foyi, and the same shivering sensation creeping up the length of her _lekku_ that Foyi had felt when in the presence of Virec Xan and his Darksider assasins made the appendages of her head curl and twitch. "But from the two of you, I require answers, and offer opportunities in return. So, if you would utilize some intelligence and put your weapons down, _then_ we might have a civilized conversation."

Foyi tightened her grip on her disruptor rifle and answered for all of them. "We don't have time for your games. Go to hell."

The Inquisitor's expression tightened almost imperceptibly. Her sneer leveled into a grim line, while her right wrist flicked just beneath the folds of her robe's sleeve. From that sleeve, as if materializing from midair, emerged a small cylinder of white and silver ribs of metal, with a grip and activation stub for some mechanism. Her finger flexed over that stub, and the tip of the cylinder erupted with a beam of energy a meter in length with a _snap-hiss_ and an incessant drone Foyi could feel in her teeth. The blade emerging from the hilt was a dazzling, pure light of white, though it was surrounded by a lurid glow of crimson that bathed the dim clifftop in a sanguine hue, painting her maroon robes with the color of blood and bringing a demonic gleam to her eyes. Foyi felt her body freeze in momentary shock as she realized she was looking at a lightsaber, a weapon she believed she would never see with her own eyes, considering the Jedi had been all but destroyed before she could even articulate intelligent speech. The Inquisitor passed the blade through a lazy circle in front of her, then brought it up into a guard position even as she dropped into a ready, crouching stance. From behind the blade came her voice, which had lost all adoption of civility.

"I'm afraid...I must insist."


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Lightning split the sky, bisecting the growing darkness and the brooding, boiling cumulonimbi, pregnant with moisture. The clouds and the onset of night were beginning to plunge all of Felucia into darkness, save for the rampant phosphorescence indicative of whole colonies of fungi, lighting the jungles with random patches of soft illumination below. But atop the precipice where a storm of violence was brewing, nearing the point at which the tension would boil over, the phosphorescent patches of the mushroom grove were overpowered by the hellish glow of the Inquisitor's lightsaber as she spun it through a ready arc in a threat display. The Dark Troopers, Terror Troopers, and Purge Trooper had all primed their weapons, and there were enough blasters aimed at their quarry that any move on their part would be met with hails of blasterfire from two or more sources. Not that Foyi, Rayf, or Vaevi could move much at all, with the lip of the ledge mere centimeters from their heels and the scattered grove of fungal stalks atop the ridge limiting their maneuverability beyond what was practical for a fight.

Foyi cast a glance at her companions, then at her surroundings, memorizing the layout of the field upon which she was certain battle would commence. She tried not to let her gaze wander too far from the Inquisitor, who began to take careful steps forward, her scarlet blade held before her. Foyi would have to keep the Devaronian in sight at all times, for she was the only combatant here whom she could not actively sense in the Force. Thus, if it came to combat, she would not be able to anticipate her movements and her attacks; it would probably be best to try and keep the Inquisitor at range if at all possible. But then Foyi remembered her observed ability to produce Force lightning from her fingertips, and the Zeison Sha belatedly wondered how she might be able to defend against such an assault.

Vaevi tensed beside her, most likely trying to determine if she dared to fire a blaster bolt at the Inquisitor. But it was Rayf who made the first move, stepping forward slowly, slipping the Pulse Rifle across his back and walking past his wan-shen, which still stood upright from where it had been planted in the mud and moss. His expression was indecipherable, but he had eyes only for the Devaronian woman. "Vinaq? Is that you?"

The Devaronian halted midstep, letting the blade of her weapon drop toward the stone at her feet. She stared intently at Rayf, and her severe expression became another sneer. "Thame...Mirac, wasn't it? I wondered if that was you. Honestly, I'm not certain I would've recognized you if you hadn't said anything."

Rayf ignored the skeptical stares levered his way by his companions as he took another step forward, keeping his hands by his sides and his palms facing forward to show the Inquisitor his lack of weaponry. "It's been a long time. I can forgive a little slip of the memory."

The Devaronian known as Vinaq gave a snide smile. "How long _has_ it been, Thame? Another lifetime, certainly, since I watched you leaving the Temple in shame. I remember feeling a mixture of pity for your failure, and relief that I had not shared in it. Though knowing what I know now, I wonder if I shouldn't have left that day as well, and thus avoid the years of the Jedi's hypocrisy I suffered under."

Rayf's eyebrow rose as the only external indication of his mood, but Foyi could feel his emotions filtering from him through the Force, a mixture of sadness and determination as he looked upon the Inquisitor before him. Whomever this woman had been when Rayf had known her was alien to the creature that stood before him now, and Rayf felt so despondent about this unwelcome revelation, Foyi's own feelings ached for him. "And you find no hypocrisy amongst the ranks of the Empire?"

Vinaq's crimson blade was a blur of light as it came up into a ready position again, forcing Rayf to halt his slow progress toward her. "I never said there wasn't. But the Empire does not bother with claiming to be things it isn't. It stands for peace, justice, and security in the galaxy, and accomplishes this by any means necessary, while the Emperor has the presence of mind to not be ashamed of the actions he takes that are necessary. There are members who find deception and secrecy more appealing than the New Order's tenets, but that's why people like myself exist. To find traitors in the ranks." Her blade lowered, an accusatory finger leveled toward the trio before her. "And enemies of the Empire."

Now Rayf let the pain he was feeling show on his face in a sad grimace. "You don't see it, do you, Vinaq? You don't see how far you've fallen, how deep into the dark you tread. I still remember your goals, back in the Katarn Clan, to root out proponents of the Dark Side, to become one with the Force, at its beck and call as assuredly as it was at yours. We shared those goals, Vinaq-"

"If not our talents," Vinaq replied acidly. "You pine for the foul, stagnant days of the Old Republic and the stiff, dogmatic propaganda of the Jedi. For days of childish dreams and uneducated desires. Your failure to pass the Initiate Trials kept you from being further indoctrinated into their ideals of base pacifism and inaction, burdened with a Code preaching tolerance, unity, and nonviolence. But then the Clone Wars came, and opened my eyes to the lies of the Jedi, as they willingly became harbingers of war, death, and destruction, all in the name of peace and justice." Her smile became vicious as her expression sharpened. "They preached and demanded adherence to their philosophy, but when the position of authority and respect they had held for far too long was threatened, they fought with everything they could to maintain their power, even attempting to assassinate their rightful, elected Emperor in a last-ditch effort to maintain the power afforded them." Her voice had become a heated snarl now, and Foyi found it disconcerting to see such rage contorting her features and yet feel none of it through the Force. "They raised us, took advantage of our powers to shape us into their own Light Side-worshiping drones, telling us to think for ourselves and deciding _what_ we should think. They told us to live our lives in peace and serenity, and then handed us _weapons_ with the ability to slice through armor, muscle, and bone with hardly an effort on the part of the wielder. And then they took the younglings they so valued as the future of peace and justice in the galaxy and threw them into warzones, leading humans born from formulas and templates to serve as expendable dejarik pieces thrown across the galaxy. For all their ideals regarding the sanctity of life and the purveyance of peace, they willingly became wanton agents of death and war wherever they went. The galaxy could not survive their hypocrisy any longer, for they had sickened of it long ago. Do you see the rest of the galaxy sharing your fantasies of the past and a return of the Jedi?'

Vinaq stepped closer to Rayf, her expression insistent now. "And all that time, they had the capability to use the Force to its full potential. They had the ability to gain absolute power, and to hold onto it indefinitely, and yet they blinded themselves to the opportunities open only to them. They could have achieved all that they claimed to uphold, if only they had not been too terrified and weak to attain the necessary power to maintain security in this galaxy of war and chaos. The Emperor and the society he has built holds no such compunctions. The Force is limitless energy, Thame, and we were granted the gift of knowing it intimately, of drawing upon and wielding that energy as we see fit. Why limit ourselves as the Jedi once did? Why learn only one aspect of the Force defined by tradition and politics so ancient they have bearing no longer on the modern age? The Jedi deemed you a failure, your sensitivity to the Force so weak you were not worth the time required of them to take from their busy days of meditation, contemplation, and dancing with training remotes. And yet you stand before me and I can feel the Force flowing through you. You are stronger now than you ever were before, but you have yet to realize your potential." She lowered her hissing, droning blade and extended her empty hand in offering. "We need not be enemies. None of us. I came to this world to discover Force-sensitives who were tired of the limits placed upon them by themselves or others, to become all they were meant to be, to serve justice and order in this galaxy. To make the reality in which we live a better place for ourselves and others. And here I find not only an old friend, but another gifted with the Force accompanying him. The Force has thus led us all here, to this moment, and I believe this is an opportunity none of us can pass up."

Foyi opened her mouth to respond negatively, but it was Rayf who answered the Inquisitor first, his voice pained. "We're not here to discuss whether the Jedi were right or wrong, or the Clone Wars, or your delusional and sycophantic view of Palpatine and his monstrous regime. And none of us are here on this diseased and wounded world to survive some gauntlet in the hopes of gaining more power in the Force. Vinaq, there's a killer somewhere in these woods, a monster who kidnaps innocents and uses them for his own perverse pleasures. One of our own was kidnapped by him, and is in grave danger, and so we have come to save the younglings from him. You're right, we don't need to be enemies. If you truly believe in everything in your monologue here, you'll join with us in order to find justice for his victims, to bring the Empire's purported security and civility to this wild and untamed corner of the galaxy. Every moment we delay here is another moment that those we wish to rescue from abject cruelty are left in danger." He opened his hands wider in an imploring gesture. "Please, Vinaq. We were friends once. I don't agree with much of what you say, and your attire suggests you fulfill a role within the Empire that requires actions of you I would definitely take issue with. But we share a common background, and at one time, we shared goals as well. Let us share another goal now, or let us pass, and forget our misunderstandings."

Foyi tightened her grip on the disruptor rifle, keeping it trained on the Inquisitor, though she doubted the effectiveness of an energy weapon against an opponent trained with a blade that was capable of reflecting such attacks back on the shooter. She removed one of her hands and dropped it to her belt, where she had tucked her discblade. Vaevi kept her sniper rifle similarly trained, sweat trickling down her throat and the tip of her nose. Both Twi'lek and Iktotchi's gaze were sliding back and forth between Rayf and Vinaq, while the group of troopers and droids shifted anxiously, practically yearning for open bloodshed. Foyi's eyes rested on the Inquisitor, and in the bloody wash from her blade, she could see her features kept neutral, but her eyes betrayed her consideration. She seemed to actually be weighing her options, one of which was allying, even temporarily, with the trio before her.

Thunder crackled over their heads, and the skies split with lightning and the ringing, echoing chorus of the heavens. Rain began to fall, first in obese drops of slimy water that splattered infrequently upon the bodies and garments of those gathered below. But within moments, the rain grew in intensity, the growling winds lashing them with great sheets of moisture. Yet the storm did nothing to abate the tension between the two groups, and not a one of those gathered on the precipice dared look away long enough to glance up at the storm unleashing its fury upon them, their faces lit infrequently by blue and white flashes competing for illumination with the glowing fungi and the garish sanguine glow of Vinaq's lightsaber.

The Inquisitor tightened her grip on her lightsaber almost imperceptibly, her muscles tensing beneath her armor and her robes. She was within easy striking distance of Rayf, a fact that both of them were intimately aware of. When she next spoke, her words were as cold as the vacuum of space. "We may have history together, Thame, but it may surprise you to find that I never thought much of you in the first place. You rely upon a friendship that could barely be called that to convince us to help you or let you go. And I thought myself audacious. We don't need to be enemies, but you do not get to dictate the terms of whatever relationship we might have from here on out." She gestured at him with her lightsaber, the blade passing mere centimeters in front of his face, though Rayf did not flinch. "You have all committed crimes against the Empire, including but not limited to the vandalism of Imperial military materiel, aggravated assault and attempted murder of Imperial personnel, and resisting arrest. If you don't lay down your weapons this instant, you shall be labeled fugitives, and dealt with harshly and accordingly."

Rayf, the lightsaber still shimmering before his eyes, exhaled an aggrieved sigh. "Vinaq...there are younglings in danger. Younglings we can help. _You_ can help. We're wasting time here."

"I can sense that you truly believe what you are saying, though that doesn't mean it isn't a lie or misinformation," came Vinaq's quiet response. "I have had no reports regarding such an individual as you describe, nor evidence that there is anything of note on this world that isn't within the view of the Empire. Even if what you say is so, none of that is my mission, and I cannot ignore my duty to complete the mission given me. Neither can I allow malcontents and fugitives to range free. This is your last chance, Thame; yours and your friends. Surrender peacefully, or face the consequences."

Foyi had heard enough. Refusing to wait for their enemies to make the first move, she gathered the Force about her in a sudden tidal wave of energy and shoved her left hand toward her companions. The rain-lashed atmosphere billowed from her open palm, throwing both Vaevi and Rayf to the side, away from the cliff edge and toward the thicket of mushrooms. As she did this, she tucked into a roll that gained her space from both the edge and the Inquisitor, and somersaulted to one knee, where she swung her disruptor rifle at the troopers on the lower end of the clifftop. She fired a pair of blasts, and brilliant emerald explosions tore through their ranks, reducing one of the Dark Troopers to little more than sparking shrapnel that impacted several of its fellows, and blasting the legs out from another Dark Trooper, sending it falling to its back, where its rolling momentum surrendered to gravity and sent it tumbling back down the far slopes of the cliff. But even as she drew a bead on the slinking, hunched troopers in the ghastly masks, they began disappearing from view, as if ceasing to exist, leaving her nothing to aim at, save for the Dark Troopers and the towering, dark-armored droid now thundering toward her, its shoulder-mounted missile launcher tracking the Twi'lek it had selected as its target.

Foyi's danger sense shrieked at her, and she tucked into another roll with no particular direction in mind, as long as it carried her away from the imminent attack and not send her rolling from the ledge. A staccato burst of laserfire passed through the air where she had been a second before, and she sprang to her feet again after fetching up against the bole of one of the large mushrooms straddling the top of the cliff. She braced herself against the sturdy trunk of fungus at her back and fired a retaliatory burst, the blast of green energy lancing through the rain and striking the last of the Dark Troopers that remained standing at its feet. The Dark Trooper gave a digitized groan as its legs were blown out from underneath it, flipping the enormous carapace of the droid to the side, where it bounced, rolled, and met the edge of the cliff. The torso disappeared over the ledge, but the quick reflexes of its right arm dug into the mud and moldy carpet atop the ledge, arresting its fall though leaving it in a tenuous position.

Foyi only remained before the mushroom for a moment, rolling to the side again as the Inquisitor whirled on her and stretched out her left hand, the appendage not currently holding her lightsaber. Foyi could not feel her opponent calling upon the Force, but she could feel the coldest waters erupting through the surface of the vast ocean, and a blinding bolt of lightning was ejected from her fingertips. The lightning passed within millimeters of Foyi's flailing _tchin_ as she rolled away, and impacted the mushroom stalk, flash-heating the slimy surface and causing it to explode in a spray of water droplets and gobs of slime. Foyi came up to one knee, bringing her disruptor rifle to her shoulder, but she felt the Force whirl about her as a telekinetic hand reached out to grip the end of her weapon and rip it free of her slippery hands. Before Foyi could bring her own telekinesis to bear, the disruptor rifle was already spinning end over end through the air, soaring over the lip of the precipice and into the darkness of the rainy jungle far below, and Vinaq was sprinting toward her, the Force allowing her to close the intervening distance between them in the blink of an eye. Foyi saw a flare of brilliant scarlet curving down toward her and reacted on instinct, her hands reaching out to send a frenzied push through the Force. Likely, the Inquisitor was prepared for such an attack, but not its desperation and ferocity, and she gave a shout as she flew bodily through the air to slam against another mushroom stalk hard enough for her armor to _clack_ loudly.

Foyi's hand flashed down to her belt, and it came away with a spray of rain, gripping her discblade. She cocked her hand back to let loose a deadly throw of the weapon, but the breath was blown out of her lungs as something struck her in the back, sending an inferno of pain arcing along all her nerves, followed closely by a horrifying paralysis she had experienced only once before, at the hands of Sable Dawn assassins and their stun blasters. Her body refused to obey her commands, and she found herself falling on her back, her limbs writhing, her muscles bunching and warping in convulsions. She only maintained her grip on her discblade because her fingers locked around its hilt, though she would not have been able to throw it anyway. Her vision undulated and swam, as though she had been plunged underwater, and she could not draw proper breath into her lungs, no matter how hard she tried.

Foyi called out to the Force, trying to reach out to the waters that calmed and soothed and strengthened her, but she was unable to fight through the alternating periods of pain and lack of sensation. It was so difficult to think, or even see properly, but she was aware enough to see one of the lurking Imperial forms looming over her, the Terror Trooper materializing as if from the air itself, raising one of his gloved hands above his head. His fingers flashed with the razor-sharp blades he aimed to plunge into her unprotected throat and sternum.

Foyi could barely comprehend how close she was to death before the blades flashed down, only for something metallic to appear millimeters from her nose and intercept the hand, whipping through the trooper's wrist and sending the severed appendage spinning away into the darkness, blades and all. The wheezing Terror Trooper had enough time to let out a surprised squeak when another arc of metal darted in from the side of the Twi'lek's vision, and she suddenly realized she was looking at Rayf's wan-shen, the blade affixed to the end sunk all the way to the shaft in the lightly-armored throat of the trooper. A mere heartbeat from when the blade first entered the trooper's throat, it pulled itself free, and with it came a spray of blood as the Imperial soldier collapsed, falling heavily beside Foyi, the trooper's amputated wrist falling upon Foyi's abdomen hard enough to send a jolt of pain through her.

But that pain allowed her to find the focus she had been looking for, the jolt back to reality she needed to fight the effects of the stun blast. She found the Force again, meekly answering her call, but coming to her aid with a flood of power that allowed her to still the convulsions in her limbs sufficient to roll over on her side. For it was from there she heard a crackling sound, a screeching of metal accompanied by a whine of energy as the ledge was painted in sweeping red flashes. She blinked away rainwater and stupefaction in order to see two figures darting forward and back in a lethal dance of blades, one at the end of a lengthy polearm where even the blunt end was being used as rapidly as the darting blade at the opposite end, the other a meter-length of shivering crimson plasma. It took her a second that stretched to an eternity to recognize the figures as Rayf and Inquisitor Vinaq, twirling and dodging, jumping from side to side or narrowly avoiding sweeps from each others blades. She had seen Rayf fight before, the way in which he plied his Matukai training his his martial arts skills to become a whirling dervish of deadly motion. But she had yet to see him duel with an opponent who could meet him face to face with matching skill and ferocity. What little Foyi could actually perceive of the combatants revealed Rayf to be the quicker of the two, his movements precise and blurred with their speed. He wielded his wan-shen in a two-handed grip, swinging the weapon in great sweeps and slashes to bring the blade in line with various vital areas on the Devaronian, aimed for gaps in her armor or places on her body that were not as well protected.

But the Inquisitor was a force to be reckoned with on her own. Her motions were more subtle and rarely required her to move more than a few centimeters at a time, but her feet were constantly flashing across the ground, repositioning her entire body and stance with each alteration between offense and defense. Sometimes, she gripped her lightsaber in both hands to accept particularly powerful blows from the Matukai Adept, stopping them just before the blade could cut deep into a weak point on her armored form. Her lightsaber flared as it contacted the Force-imbued phrik alloy of the wan-shen, but she would not allow the longer reach of Rayf's weapon to keep her from pressing the assault when she saw an opportunity. Most of these she created for herself, for she would slide her red blade along the length of his wan-shen, forcing Rayf to disengage, lest the length of plasma cut deep into his fingers. Other times, she would wield the lightsaber in a single hand, allowing her to send her weapon into fanciful twirls, pirouettes, and spins that were more for diversionary tactics, attempting to discomfit Rayf, and then pressing the attack with a vicious series of stabs and heavy slashes coming from every conceivable direction. She was not as fast as Rayf was, but her defense was impeccable, her lightsaber always there just in time to intercept Rayf's counters or attacks, sometimes merely turning the wan-shen's blade just a centimeter or two to the right or left, so that his attack met only empty air and falling rain. And she never let an attack go unanswered, for when she would block or riposte, she would bring her free hand back to the hilt of her lightsaber and try to overpower Rayf with heavy-handed chops, stabs, and slashes. And when Rayf intercepted or dodged away from these, she would switch to a single-handed grip again and use her free hand for a telekinetic shove or a short burst of devastating Force lightning.

Foyi struggled to her elbows and knees, her fingers finally starting to release from their death grip on her discblade. Another crackling stun blast whizzed past her head, close enough her _tchun_ went numb and started to quiver, but she barely registered it, focusing on trying to regain her momentum. Blasterfire rang out above the sound of the wind, pouring rain, and grumbling thunder, and the body of another Terror Trooper splashed in the wet mold beside her. She instinctively rolled away from it, which became more like the flopping of a burra fish out of water. She sensed another presence beside her, and awkwardly came to her knees, her discblade held at the ready, but her wavering vision focused on the strained and grim face of Vaevi. The bounty hunter splashed to the Twi'lek's side and roughly hauled her back to her spasming legs with one arm, while she swept her aim over the clifftop, looking for the cloaked Terror Troopers still lurking somewhere out of sight on the ledge. "You alright?" she hissed, barely perceptible over the rain and clash of melee weapons in the furious duel a little over a meter away from them.

Foyi felt a cold splash of awareness against her own, and she used the hand she had wrapped about Vaevi's shoulders to shove her back to the cliff's surface, letting herself fall more than throwing herself down with the bounty hunter. A pair of stun blasts whipped through the space the two women had occupied, and Foyi caught flickers of corporeality denoting the origins of the blasts. Foyi was still too unsteady to act upon those sights yet, but Vaevi was not so impaired, raising her heavy blaster pistol from where she had fallen and firing a flurry of bolts. Two of those bolts found one of the Terror Troopers, seemingly exploding in midair before the Imperial's cloaking device shorted out, and his body fell to the clifftop's surface, smoldering holes burrowed deep in his armor. Another pair of bolts found a second Terror Trooper, but these merely sparked off the pauldrons and vambraces of one of the trooper's arms, dropping his cloak for a second before it compensated for his sudden, darting movements and the superficial damage inflicted upon his armor. She anticipated his movements based on her fleeting glimpse of him and fired several more shots, but the bolts had no effect, passing through the air without hitting anything. Another stun blast emerged from midair, but both Vaevi and Foyi were ready for it, rolling away so that the blast splashed harmlessly against the ground.

Foyi opened herself to the Force completely again, drawing upon its power and letting its energy rid the remaining effects of the low-level stun blast from her nerves and musculature. She pushed off the mud and mold-slicked stone and forced herself upright, just in time to arc her spine backward just as another stun blast aimed for her torso whipped past her abdomen. She threw waves of consciousness out from herself, searching for the presences within the Force that would denote the location of the Terror Troopers. Those waves broke against the dim lights of their twisted, tainted presences, as though they were creatures that had once been sentient beings, and had devolved into little more than constructs of instinct and primal rage. She felt one of the presences repositioning itself near the edge of the cliff, attempting to gain a flanking position from which he could sprint across the precipice's surface and sink his bladed fingers into hers or Vaevi's side. Foyi centered her attention on the presence she could not see with her eyes but could feel so clearly, it was as though she were touching him directly. She reached out with a telekinetic grasp that enclosed the invisible Terror Trooper, and with a shove that strained her concentration, threw him free of the cliff. The Terror Trooper gave a shriek of surprise and horror as he hurtled in freefall, and though she heard the sound of his own terror, his cloaking device functioned perfectly, and so she never actually saw him fall.

Foyi and Vaevi stayed close to each other, not straying far from the other and attempting to remain back to back, so that the Terror Troopers could not sneak up and stab them in their spines and vital organs. Foyi continued to stretch out with the Force to catch glimpses of their presences as they darted back and forth across the clifftop, trying to attack from different angles, either firing from range with their stun blasters, or sprinting toward them with their talons outstretched. Foyi sensed one of the latter rushing toward her from her right side and she flipped her discblade around, letting it fly loose from her hand in an upward arc that came crashing down on the approaching enemy, causing his cloaking device to falter as the whirling, curved blades of the Force-imbued weapon chewed their way through the thin armor at his collar, eliciting a spray of blood and a wheezing screech that became little more than a gurgle. The trooper fell forward to the stone, his lifeless body propelled so more by the force of Foyi telekinetically ripping her weapon free of the deep, ragged wounds she had inflicted upon him. Behind her, Vaevi had sheathed her sidearm and drawn her Accelerated Charged Particle Array Gun, discharging expansive blasts of energy at anything that might even remotely be a flicker of cloaking technology. Foyi noticed her shots were aimed to at least land glancing shots, though she had yet to put another Terror Trooper down permanently, and she wondered if the Iktotchi's natural telepathic abilities allowed her to sense the minds of their enemies in much the same way Foyi did using the Force.

Foyi and Vaevi moved as one, never keeping in one place too long, dancing back and forth on the slippery stone and soaked moss at their feet, their erratic footwork, sometimes motivated by Foyi's or even Vaevi's prescient warnings. Stun blasts whistled past them, while Terror Troopers suddenly emerged from their invisibility with swinging blades. One of the troopers appeared at Foyi's side, his talons arcing through the air and catching against her right shoulder. The Twi'lek gave a shriek of both surprise and anguish as the sharpened durasteel edges dug deep grooves into the skin there, ripping the fabric of her jacket and tunic and drawing great, dark beads of blood. She instinctively tore herself away in a clumsy spin, the stun blast's effects still causing her legs to move slowly and weakly, but she willed herself to move and therefore narrowly avoid the blades of the trooper's other hand. Vaevi heard her distress and wheeled around, discharging the last shot in her weapon's current power pack to nearly cut the Terror Trooper in half as his cloaking device began to generate its invisibility field again. The trooper hit the clifftop hard and continued rolling, his remains roiling with black smoke and flecks of dark, slushy gore. The Iktotchi reached to her utility belt for a fresh power pack, and Foyi turned to her in time to see another Terror Trooper emerging from invisibility, both clawed hands stabbing toward the bounty hunter's exposed ribs. Foyi called an unintelligible warning and overextended her arm, angling the discblade so that she trapped those talons in the space between the circular hilt and the encircling blade encompassing it. Having her opponent in a temporarily disadvantageous position, Foyi planted her feet and called the Force to her arm, yanking hard to the right and forcing the Terror Trooper's claws away from both Vaevi and herself. The trooper struggled with her, quickly extricating his talons, but had not the time to bring them to bear once more, for Foyi's other hand came forward as she pulled deeply from the fathomless waters of the Force. Her free hand made a grasping motion and the air warped around them as the invisible extensions of her grip seized the Terror Trooper around the throat. The wheeze heard through the soldier's respirator suddenly hitched as he was no longer able to draw from the air the machinery provided and filtered for him. His taloned hands came to clutch and grasp at his throat as Foyi's splayed fingers drew closer in a pinch, allowing her simmering anger to rise to the fore once more, to augment her power through the Force and the grip she held on the man's throat. With a snarl, she closed her hand into a fist, telekinetically crushing the man's throat. The Terror Trooper convulsed as though he had been shot, and collapsed to the clifftop quivering, unable to draw any air through his ruined esophagus in the last moments of his life.

Foyi gave a gasp herself as she let the anger she had called upon to augment her attack flow away with the tides of the Force, and lowered her arm. Vaevi finished reloading her Scatter Gun and swung it about the precipice's top, looking for more enemies. Which she found immediately in the form of the hulking, mechanical monstrosity that was the Purge Trooper, thundering from the shadows provided by the mushroom grove, its heavy footfalls carrying it toward the two women, while a shimmering blade of lethal energy extended from its left forearm. Vaevi immediately responded, firing a pair of blasts into the droid's chest, but they had little effect against the unnaturally thick armor, and she was almost a second too slow to avoid the first jab of the energy blade from the Purge Trooper. With blinding reflexes, the droid turned that stab into a slash to the side, nearly taking Foyi's head off as she threw herself to the slippery stone in order to evade the sweep. She was still scrambling to get back up when the Purge Trooper took a step forward, and raised its other foot to slam down on her. Foyi rolled a nanosecond before the foot came down with an earsplitting _crack_ as the heavy appendage left a deep impression in the mud, moss, and stone. The Twi'lek kept rolling until she slammed herself against another hoary mushroom trunk, using its solidity as a support to bring herself back to her feet. She reached out with her free hand again as she brought her telekinetic abilities to bear, attempting to grip the Purge Trooper in the Force, to halt its movements or even throw it from the precipice and let Felucia's gravitational pull finish the droid for her. But she found something she could not identify resisting her, as though the Purge Trooper had its own access to the Force and was actively blocking her attempts to manipulate it through telekinesis. The Purge Trooper seemed to be aware of her attempts as it merely quaked, remaining mostly stationary as the Force pulled unsuccessfully upon it, and the droid swiveled toward her. The Purge Trooper ignored the continued assault of the bounty hunter and triggered its missile launcher; a warhead wreathed in blue flame and energy streaked across the intervening space, and Foyi squeaked in fear and surprise as she threw herself forward again. The mushroom exploded in a wash of flame and spores as the missile decimated the fungal stalk, sending the cap of the mushroom pinwheeling skyward and splattering her with chunks of fungal flesh and gouts of ichor. Some of the slime splashed the open wounds upon her shoulder, and she hissed in shock as pain arced through her arm and down through her side. The Twi'lek scrambled to her feet and hurled her discblade, barely requiring any mental concentration to send the thrown weapon at her enemy as she continued sprinting across the clifftop, chased by another pair of missiles. Her discblade whirled in from the side and caught the Purge Trooper just below its immense helmet; the curved blades found something vulnerable, for the immense droid gave a digitized squawk as sparks splashed from just beneath its helmet. At the same time, Vaevi's continued assault put carbon scoring and minor, steaming fractures in the droid's armor, and the Purge Trooper jerked and convulsed as it fell to its knees.

Foyi called her discblade back to her waiting palm, jammed it in the holster on her back, and as she extricated her hand from behind her, pulled her A295 Blaster Rifle with the same motion. She brought the weapon to her shoulder and flipped the fire selector to full autofire, unleashing a fusillade of lasers into the kneeling Purge Trooper, aiming for anything that might be a vital spot.

The droid accepted the first few lasers and another blast from Vaevi's ACP Scatter Gun with hardly a reaction, but it suddenly pushed off the clifftop's surface and came to its feet again. Even as it did so, its right arm swept back and clobbered Vaevi as she reached for another power pack for her empty weapon, sending the bounty hunter rolling heels over head toward the edge. The Purge Trooper then faced Foyi again, and it raised its left arm diagonally before it. The energy blade that had shimmered and sparked from its gauntlet a moment before disappeared, to be replaced by a circular construct of similar energy, which it held in front of it as it began a ponderous stride toward the Zeison Sha. Foyi backed up, heading down the lower edges of the slopes, continuing to keep a steady fire upon the Purge Trooper, but the droid was scanning and anticipating the locations where her bolts would fall, maneuvering its energy shield to intercept the blasterfire, sending many laser blasts spinning off into the rain-soaked darkness, or simply absorbing them. Foyi gritted her teeth and tried to place her shots unpredictably, but the droid maneuvered its shield in the way just in time, or it did not even bother blocking those shots that did little damage to its fantastic armored shell. The droid continued to bleed infrequent sparks from multiple breaches in its armor, but if its combat effectiveness had been compromised, the Twi'lek could not tell.

Foyi decided to attempt a feint, to draw the Purge Trooper into making an ill-conceived assault. She fired another burst of heated plasma to draw the Purge Trooper's shield, then leapt to the side and further down the moist slope, as though she were about to make a run for it and disengage fully from her enemy. The droid took the bait, halting its stride to plant its feet and trigger its missile launcher. Another rocket sped through the rain, arcing down toward her in the blink of an eye, far too quickly for a normal person to react in time to evade the missile's fury. But to Foyi, a Zeison Sha Warrior trained in the Force and having a talent for telekinesis, the missile seemed to be moving excruciatingly slowly through the rain toward her. She peeled her steadying hand from the blaster rifle and caught the missile in a steady Force grip; the missile, its afterburners still raging, quivered in midair for a moment between the Purge Trooper and the Zeison Sha. Foyi flicked her wrist, and the Force imitated the motion, the nudge she sent through its energy field flipping the missile around, so that the trailing afterburners now faced her. Having successfully redirected the projectile, she released her invisible grasp, and the projectile continued its shrieking path through the air, only back to where it had emerged. The Imperial droid was likely recalculating how it might deal with such an unfortuitous change of events when the missile slammed into the launcher from whence it had been birthed and detonated itself and all other ammunition held there. With a blinding flash of light that illuminated the crag as brightly as daylight for a heartbeat, the missile launcher and its payload exploded, melting a deep gouge in the Purge Trooper's armor, as though something much larger and stronger than it had taken a ravenous bite from its appendage and torso. What was left of the droid's helmed head spun away from the explosion, the right side melted into slag and trailing a cloud of sparks, and its ruined, smoldering torso fell with a crash that sent vibrations through the stone, felt by Foyi through the soles of her feet.

Foyi gave another exhausted gasp as she looked frantically for Vaevi, whom she had last seen rolling toward the lip of the cliff. But the Iktotchi had not fallen, and was even now pushing herself back to her feet, near where the disembodied torso of one of the Dark Troopers continued to attempt to clamber back atop the cliff. Foyi raised her blaster rifle, but it was Vaevi, cursing under her breath as she slung the Scatter Gun over her shoulder, then drew her C-10 Heavy Blaster Pistol again and triggered a flurry of bolts into the droid's hands, blowing them to pieces. With a static-filled squawk, the stunted remains of the Dark Trooper fell free of the ledge, disappearing into the jungle below.

Foyi swung her blaster to the sounds of grunts and matching blades, the crackle and hiss of plasma dragging along phrik alloy, of kicks and punches connecting with hardened muscles or ultrachrome armor. Despite the heated battle that had occurred about them, Rayf and the Inquisitor were still locked in a ferocious melee, the combatants moving above, below, and around each other in a series of lightning-fast dodges, flips, and rolls. Even Foyi, with her Force-enhanced sight, could not track all their movements, and though she raised her blaster in order to assist her friend, the fact that she could not sense the Devaronian woman in the Force, nor track her motions with her eyes, granted her no confidence in her ability to fire into the melee and not injure Rayf in the process. She slung the blaster over her back and drew her discblade, letting it spin in her hand as she awaited an opportunity to strike, while trying not to let herself become mesmerized by the lethal exchange between the two.

Rayf leapt vertically in the air as Vinaq's lightsaber swept at his ankles, allowing him to snap a kick forward with both feet that impacted the Inquisitor's armored chest. The force of the blow knocked the Devaronian backward, but she let her momentum carry her into a backflip, putting a few meters' distance between herself and Rayf. The Matukai Adept whipped his feet backward while still in midair and landed with both feet planted firmly on the clifftop's surface, then using the motion and the Force to propel himself forward in a vicious stab with his polearm. Vinaq let the blade of the wan-shen come within millimeters of her abdomen before she threw herself to the side, and the thrust sliced the air and grazed the trailing edge of her robes. Even as she evaded the attack, her lightsaber came down from a vicious overhead chop that struck the wan-shen's haft, forcing Rayf's weapon down so that she could launch her right foot in a whirling kick that connected with Rayf's ribs. The Matukai's breath exploded from his lungs in a rushing exhale, but he still had the training and presence of mind to drop into a roll, for Vinaq's crimson blade followed her kick in a furious stab aimed at the same point where the toe of her boot had impacted.

Purely on the defensive, and attempting to regain his feet, Rayf continued to roll and scramble, wheezing as he put his wan-shen through a series of sweeping, circular motions, effectively creating a shield to ward the blows of the crimson blade striking down relentlessly upon him. The Inquisitor pursued him ruthlessly, constantly pressing the assault with jumps and forward shuffles, her lightsaber slashing down upon her foe from every conceivable angle she could manage, while pushing the human closer to the confines of the fungal grove. He would be trapped in moments, and they both knew it, a grimace coming to Rayf's features, and a snarl to Vinaq's.

But the Inquisitor's back was now turned to both Foyi and Vaevi, and they seized the opportunity they had been presented immediately. Vaevi raised her heavy blaster pistol and fired a flurry of bolts, while Foyi unleashed her spinning discblade. Sensing the danger, Vinaq leapt away from Rayf, turning her leap into a back flip, twisting in midair to face the pair of women with an enraged countenance. Because of how high she had propelled herself in the stormy air, the blaster bolts went wide, and Rayf even had to evade a pair of them. Foyi directed her discblade upward to track her enemy's flight, but the Inquisitor batted the weapon aside with her lightsaber. She landed in a crouch, her lightsaber sweeping up in a curve of red as Vaevi fired another set of bolts. Most of those bolts flew off into the air or splashing across the lichens and moss at her feet, but a few of those bolts sped quickly back to their source, catching the bounty hunter in her right shoulder and thigh. The Iktotchi screamed and fell, writhing in pain from the deep burns weeping blood and smoke.

Foyi dodged to the side, putting herself between her wounded companion and the fearsome Inquisitor. She opened her hand and herself to the Force, and her discblade spun up from the clifftop's surface to attack the Inquisitor's side. But Vinaq saw it, or sensed it coming, and one of her hands unwrapped from the lightsaber's hilt to gesture at the discblade. Foyi could not feel her drawing on the Force, but she could feel the Force moving, a series of sudden and violent currents that came to center on her discblade, which stopped in midair, shivered viciously for a moment, and impossibly exploded in a shower of sparks, shrapnel, and wrappings, reducing her cherished weapon to little more than dust lost in the wind and the rain. Foyi felt her heart drop into her stomach as she saw this, as the subconscious connection she had to the weapon of the Zeison Sha was abruptly severed. She felt a new hole open in her soul, yet another wound cut across the gaping spiritual injury she had felt ever since Tama had been kidnapped. It was a wound upon her identity, her solidarity. The final assault upon the foundation of Zeison Sha membership and training Foyi had clung to for purpose in her life, the last torrent of destruction in the erosion of all she had known in her life, beginning a little over a week before. Foyi found herself stunned into silence and inaction as she stared at the windblown shards and dust that had once been her own, self-crafted weapon. Her gaze met the furious eyes of the Inquisitor, and instinctively she took a step back, away from this woman who had so gleefully and nonchalantly shattered the core of who she was. The Inquisitor pursued in a loping, threatening stride, her sanguine blade bathing her maroon robes in illumination of blood, casting her gaunt, leering face in stark shadows and washes of scarlet.

Foyi, still reeling from the loss of her weapon and the lingering effects of the stun blast, would have been an open and easy target for Vinaq, had the latter not taken her time to make her way toward the Twi'lek in order to further intimidate her, to feed off the fear, confusion, and despair rippling from her. But Vinaq had not even reached melee striking distance when Rayf was suddenly upon her again, having leapt bodily through the air in a Force-augmented jump, his wan-shen spinning down toward the crown of Vinaq's head in a powerful sweep. The Inquisitor sensed the attack mere seconds before it landed and immediately tucked into a forward roll, carrying her across the intervening space between herself and the Twi'lek. Foyi reacted too late to stop the path of the Inquisitor, her somersault carrying her into Foyi's legs and bowling the Zeison Sha over. Foyi struck the hard surface of stone with a cry of pain, which became a shriek as Vinaq's feet lashed out and connected with her ribs and wounded shoulder. Foyi tried to roll away from the Devaronian, but Vinaq had used the impact with Foyi's body to propel her upward, and Foyi's roll was arrested as the Force gathered around her in a grip like the unyielding appendages of a cruel droid, yanking her upward and back into Vinaq's waiting, physical grasp. Foyi barely had time to register that she had been pulled toward the Inquisitor with the Force before she found the Devaronian's free hand gripped around her throat, and the glare of crimson filled her vision as the Inquisitor's lightsaber hovered just at the tip of her chin. Foyi made herself go completely still, acutely aware of how only a flick of Vinaq's wrist would send the blade of plasma effortlessly through her throat or face. She gave a ragged gasp as the cold, thin fingers of Vinaq's hand closed tighter about her larynx, then cast a panicked glance toward Rayf. The human stood a couple meters away, his chest heaving, paying no heed to the rain falling in sheets upon him, his wide-eyed gaze betraying the fear he so rarely felt as he stared in horror at his friend caught in the grasp of his enemy.

Vinaq's fingers closed tighter, and she wrenched the Twi'lek's head back in a sudden, violent twist that almost caused her to faint. This allowed the Inquisitor to quickly release her hold on Foyi's throat, only for her fingers to seize around Foyi's _tchun_ and thus extend her neck back so far that Foyi had to bend her knees slightly to release some of the pressure. She gave a strangled gasp that became a whimper as the overabundance of nerves in her _lekku_ shrieked at the rough tactile contact. But Foyi dared not struggle too wildly, for the lightsaber followed her motions, keeping within millimeters of the Twi'lek's exposed throat. Rain sparked off the blade's edge in random spurts of energy and sparks. Vinaq's voice emerged just beside her ear, rising into a shout to be heard above the atmospheric disturbances and chorus of thunder. "Do you value this _schutta_ , Thame? Would you further risk her life?"

Rayf spun his wan-shen through a languid circle, before setting the weapon in a diagonal grip across his back, the blade pointed at the ground. The fear that had been so evident in his eyes moments ago had turned to anger, giving the scowl upon his face a quality that promised swift and violent retribution. "This has gone on long enough, Vinaq. You were always powerful, and you have only grown more so in the Emperor's service. But you are alone against three who have managed to destroy your entire force of specialized troops in almost as much time as it takes to say that. You are alone, and your fight is over. I offer you the same deal I did before: you forget about this whole misunderstanding, we forget we ever saw you, and we all go on our separate ways."

Foyi bit her tongue to prevent another whimper from escaping her lips as Vinaq's hold on her _lek_ tightened. There was a sadistic sense of mirth in her voice when she spoke again. "I'm still trying to determine if you actually believe what you're saying, or if you're merely trying to stall me from killing your girlfriend. These odds you suppose are stacked against me don't look so insurmountable from where I'm standing. The only one who could actually be of use to you in your dire circumstances would be the one bawling at the edge of my saber here, and the other is too concerned with the injuries I inflicted upon her to care about either one of you. It's just me and you, Thame, and since you have so graciously extended your previous offer, I will counter with one of my own. You will drop your weapon and willingly give yourself up, or you will watch as the wormhead and brainreader both die at the end of my blade before I kill you myself. You admitted yourself that I _am_ powerful, but I've barely drawn upon that power thus far. You've fought valiantly and heroically, worthy of the archives of your precious Jedi Order, but you know it's only a matter of time before I strike you down."

Rayf flipped his wan-shen around, so that he held it like a spear before him. "Let her go," he growled in a voice Foyi had never heard him use, one that was so filled with anger and impending violence, he sounded like a different being entirely. "You will not harm anyone more again today, Vinaq; not while I'm still alive."

Foyi could hear the sneer in the Inquisitor's answer. "That can be remedied if you refuse to see reason, Thame." She jerked hard on Foyi's _tchun_ , but Foyi refused to cry out, gritting her teeth against the pain and letting the agony shooting through the roots of her _lekku_ , down through her skull, shock her from her stupor, her fear, her quandary regarding her supposed loss of identity. Held fast within the unyielding grip of the Inquisitor, she felt a shiver of shame in herself, in allowing herself to become so distraught over something as simple as a weapon, a symbol of the training she valued that could be easily replaced given time. But the title of Zeison Sha Warrior was not synonymous with the name Foyim'buma, was not the sum of the entirety of her existence. The fog upon her mind and emotions lifted in the jarring clarity provided by that pain and her epiphany, and with barely a conscious thought, she divorced herself from that pain and dove beneath the waves of the Force. She extended her awareness, finding the chilling void that was the Inquisitor clutching her body so close and pushing past it, to the presence of Vaevi, radiating with equal measures of pain and determination, and the presence of Rayf, a tumultuous cauldron of pain, fatigue, and barely-controlled rage. She sent calming eddies toward his essence, urging him to be at peace, to reach for the balance he constantly attempted to maintain within himself and the Unifying Force. He reciprocated with feigned confidence and true concern for her, but offered the strength and connection they had shared beforehand, when she had reached through the Force over all Felucia looking for her lost sister.

Vinaq tightened her grip on Foyi's _tchun_ , pulling her head against her armored breast. Her lightsaber came up just beneath the Twi'lek's chin, her skin beginning to blister and smolder in such close proximity to the bloody blade in a final threat, for it was likely that she could feel the sensations passing through the Force between Foyi and Rayf, even if she could not necessarily decipher them. Vinaq's movements suggested she would end the Twi'lek's life given even the slightest provocation, but this only served to leave Foyi with one of the simplest choices she had made in recent days. Either she acted to try and help herself and her companions, or she died. Realizing the simplicity of the choice presented her, she found a serenity that suffused her form, keeping her muscles loose and waiting for any opportunity.

"You have nothing more to say?" Vinaq's voice hissed in her ear, once again addressing Rayf. "Then is that your final answer? Do you care so little for these foolish females who accompany you that you would-"

But Vinaq never got the chance to finish her sentence, for Foyi called on the Force to enhance her speed and brought her loose arms upward, her forearms contacting the wrist and forearm of the Inquisitor's sword arm. She felt the lighsaber's blade carve off the upper layer of her epidermis from her chin as she knocked the arm, and by extension, the fearsome blade up and away from her vitals. Vinaq immediately fought the impact and began to swing her lighsaber back toward the Twi'lek, but her insistence upon keeping hold of Foyi's _tchun_ limited her movements. She instead yanked again on Foyi's _lek_ , attempting to pull the Twi'lek down to the ground and thus leave her open for a stab, but Foyi threw herself back into the Inquisitor with enough velocity to bear them both to the hard stone. She felt Vinaq's air leave her lungs as her weight collapsed upon the Devaronian's armored chest, and her grip slackened enough that Foyi was able to flick her _tchun_ away from her grasping fingers. Instead of rolling away and off the Inquisitor, Foyi pressed her hands behind her and let the Force erupt from her palms in a telekinetic shove that sent Foyi flying up and back to her feet, while further grinding the Devaronian into the hard stone surface beneath. Foyi's heels barely hit the ground before she let herself fall forward and tuck into a roll, which carried her just past Rayf's position. She whirled back around in time to see Rayf bursting forward, his wan-shen held like a spear, putting all his speed and strength behind a stab meant to skewer Vinaq straight into the clifftop's surface.

But Vinaq, wheezing agonizingly now, had not lost her own strength in the Force. She did not try to evade or regain her feet, but remained prone and focused on whipping her lightsaber in from the side, where it intercepted the stab from the wan-shen and forced the weapon harmlessly to the side. Rayf recalculated immediately, stepping in from behind the failed attack for a lightning-fast kick to the Inquisitor's abdomen. Vinaq rolled slightly to the side, so that she accepted most of the ferocity of the kick in the side she had exposed. She gave a screech that was more rage than pain, and her lightsaber whirled back around, and almost took Rayf's leg off at the knee. He leapt back to avoid the whirling blade, and Vinaq took the opportunity to push off the stone with the Force and find herself upright again. She was still barely breathing, but this did not slow her down as she put her lightsaber in a spin to build momentum. She leapt back and forth, twisting her body from side to side like a contortionist as Rayf attempted to strike her with a flurry of stabs and slashes with both ends of his weapon, scything only through air. She continued to spin her lightsaber, not bothering to block any strikes or attacks, but the air warped and the thunder seemed to increase as the Dark Side gathered around her.

Vinaq contorted her body to the left to avoid a trio of slashes to her right side, then leapt up into the air, arcing through the meter and a half of intervening space between herself and Rayf. With a scream of rage that rippled through the Force and sent painful vibrations through the tips of Foyi's _lekku_ , Vinaq hurled down upon Rayf with her lightsaber curving down from above her head; its scarlet blade flared as Rayf predictably raised his wan-shen horizontally to catch the blade and the lightsaber contacted the polished hilt between his hands. With a horrid shrieking, the wan-shen's haft split down the middle. Foyi watched in horror as that blade sheered through the wan-shen and arced down for Rayf's chest, but she felt nothing but calm from Rayf, as though he had fully expected her strike to be aimed precisely to destroy his weapon, The lightsaber slicing down toward his sternum, he called upon his supernatural speed and dived to the side, a jagged, smoldering half of his weapon in each hand. The lightsaber cut a deep groove in the stone at the Inquisitor's feet, a groove that only grew as she slid the blade to the side and out into the air in pursuit of Rayf. The human's dive brought him back to his feet, but he had not anticipated Vinaq being so close to him, and he had not the time to react to the two-handed stab aimed for his torso.

A stab that never reached its target, as the scarlet lightsaber suddenly went wide and Vinaq cried out. For Foyi had not remained idle, telekinetically seizing a small stone and hurling it across the clifftop's surface, the projectile whipping through the air to impact the hilt of the lightsaber with an echoing _clang_ of stone against metal. The stone did no damage to the weapon, but the force it applied redirected her stab enough to keep the lightsaber from entering Rayf's flesh. Vinaq cast an enraged glance Foyi's way, only to provide an opening for Rayf, wielding the severed pieces of his weapon like twin daggers, striking precisely and quickly. The wan-shen's blade slid across Vinaq's right forearm, slicing deeply through the thick sleeve and between a seam of her armor, drawing tears of blood to accompany the falling droplets of rain. The other half of his weapon spun down upon her left wrist, the red-hot end where the lightsaber had severed it stabbing through her leather glove and burning deep into her flesh.

The Inquisitor gave a shriek of pain as both of her hands lost their grips on her weapon, the pain too intense for her to properly control her palms and fingers anymore. The lightsaber whirled free of her gasp, its blade snuffed from existence as the hilt spun in midair and bounced across the slippery stone surface. The Inquisitor seemed to just be realizing that she had been disarmed when Rayf followed his strikes with another momentous kick, landing it in her abdominal armor and sending her sprawling. Vinaq attempted to halt her tumble, but Foyi had no intention of letting her regain her composure or fighting prowess, unleashing a telekinetic push across the stone surface, the blast of air and displaced rain scattering shrapnel and loose moss as it traveled like a missile across the cliffop and caught the Inquisitor in the side. The Force completely changed the trajectory of Vinaq's flailing tumble, and before she could catch hold of anything or right herself, she flew away and tumbled over the lip of the cliff with barely a whisper of zeyd-cloth and a spray of water droplets.

Foyi extended her consciousness until she could no longer feel the unnatural void in the Force denoting Vinaq's presence due to distance and the morass of Force presences within the jungles below. She gave a ragged exhale, and immediately rushed to where Vaevi still lay, cursing the pain radiating from her wounds as tears of anger and agony slid from her eyes and joined the rain running down her jaw and chin. The Twi'lek dropped in a crouch beside the wounded bounty hunter, and saw the Iktotchi struggling with the clasps of her pack. "Let me help you," Foyi urged, taking the pack herself and opening it to peer into its contents. "What're you looking for?"

"Medpac", Vaevi replied simply through gritted teeth. "Is...the Jedi-hunter...dead?"

Rayf stumbled over to their sides, dropping to his knees and letting out a long, shuddering breath. He seemed visibly shaken, more spiritually than physically, and Foyi could still feel the vague and stormy jumble of emotions within him that he did not bother to hide. The duel with someone he had recognized, who had been as a stranger to him still, had drained him, and the normal stoicism and serenity with which he held himself was thrown all into disarray. Foyi gave him a furtive, pained glance as she pulled the medpac from Vaevi's bag and flipped it open. "I didn't kill her. I just threw her off the cliff."

Vaevi pulled her bloodstained hand from her thigh wound and snatched the kit from Foyi's hands, and began rummaging through it with quivering, spastic fingers. "Then...th-the fall will kill her."

"Unlikely," Rayf answered hollowly, gazing off into the lashing rain and darkness. His features were momentarily lit by a skittering of lightning bisecting the sky and boiling clouds overhead. "Probably the most we can hope for is that she breaks a leg or sprains her neck. Either way, we've bought ourselves some time." He returned his attention to the wounded bounty hunter, and grimaced at the blood leaking from the burns scythed through her shadowsilk garment and the skin beneath. The Iktotchi pulled a small cylinder with an injector on one end and a light on the other, and without hesitation stabbed the syringe into her leg, just below the wound in her thigh, and gave a gasp as the blue-tinged bacta held within the ampule suffused her veins and began the regenerative process of her damaged tissues, while mitigating some small measure of pain from her injuries. She reached for the medpac again, but Rayf leaned forward, dropping the two halves of his wan-shen to the stone beside her and seizing the kit from her smeared, moist hands. Vaevi let her head fall back into the cushion of mud and moss below her, and simply lay still as Rayf extracted a pair of bacta patches, handing one to Foyi, trusting she knew what to do with it. Foyi unwrapped the patch, then bent down and tore away enough of the burnt edges of the shadowsilk so that the patch only contacted skin. She finished applying the patch at the same time Rayf finished with Vaevi's shoulder, and the bounty hunter uttered a string of expletives and exhalations before she finally sighed as her wounds began to absorb the bacta from the patches.

"How're you feeling now?" Foyi asked, keeping her stare locked upon the agonized grimace etched into Vaevi's countenance.

"So stellar I could just throw up," she answered through gritted teeth.

"Can you walk?"

"Of course I can," Vaevi grumbled, groaning as she levered herself off the stone using her uninjured arm and leg. She made it to a standing position only briefly, but when she tried to put a little weight on her injured leg, she would have fallen over had Rayf and Foyi not both caught her. "Maybe not. Not very well, anyway," she added begrudgingly. She wrapped an arm around Foyi's shoulder, which drew an involuntary hiss of pain as her weight settled upon the Twi'lek's wounded shoulder and prompted more blood from the deep lacerations there.

Rayf peered over the Iktotchi's head, and his gaze widened again to see the wound on Foyi's shoulder. "You're hurt," he remarked in a hoarse voice.

"I'll be fine," Foyi replied irritably. She looked up at the pitch-black sky, at the torrential rains still falling upon her face and into her eyes. Despite the prevalence of water shed by the sky, the rain was warm and humid, almost viscous in its composition, and after the exertion of battle and injury, she felt covered in grime. Almost every portion of her body experienced aches and pains so intense, she could barely keep her own feet. In spite of this, she remained upright by a hope and enthusiasm she had not felt during this entire search; she had finally confirmed the planet where Tama had been kidnapped, the same planet she now walked. More importantly, she had determined that Tama remained alive for certain. In spite of all that had occurred in the last few moments, her spirit felt more at peace, more joyful, buoyant even, than it had in many days, and it motivated the lively pace of her steps. "We need to get off this ridge and keep moving. I'll get myself patched up when we're somewhere safer."

Rayf gave her a skeptical look, his gaze sliding significantly toward the Iktotchi. "I don't know how much moving we really should be doing."

Vaevi turned her grimace toward him. "If you're talking about me, I'm not an invalid. I've been shot up worse than this and survived...I'll be fine. I might just need a little help here or there."

"If nothing else, we need to find a place where Va—where all of us can rest. A place anymore Imperials lurking around can't find us so easily."

Rayf conceded the point with a nod. "Then let's plot a course outta here."

"Well, if we're going to rest, we shouldn't take too long," Vaevi remarked irritably as the Twi'lek began to help her hobble down the slippery and treacherous slopes. "We still need to find 'the Shepherd'...and any younglings he might still have imprisoned."

"Believe me, I've not forgotten," Foyi replied adamantly. "And with Rayf's help, I finally connected with my sister. She's here, on Felucia, and she's alive. I didn't get a very good impression of her, or much information on where she is, but she left me feelings and images to help us locate her. And now that I've connected with her, I can just barely feel her presence, out there in the jungle. We'll find her now. I know we will."

Vaevi gave her a dark expression. "And 'the Shepherd'? Did you sense him?"

Foyi shook her head. "I don't know. I got the impression that Tama is no longer anywhere near him, as she didn't seem to be in immediate danger."

Vaevi fell silent after that, leaning heavily on Foyi as she picked her way carefully down the treacherous slopes, which could barely be seen through the darkness and obscuring sheets of rain that continued to fall. Behind them, and further up the slope, Rayf paused as he retrieved the halves of his wan-shen. With a sigh, he deconstructed the weapon and stowed the pieces in their holsters upon his belt and back to the best of his ability. He turned to follow the two women, to catch up to them and offer his help in Vaevi's wounded state, but a flash of metal upon the stone less than a meter from him caught his eye. He approached the discarded device, to find the silver and white ribbed hilt of the Inquisitor's lightsaber, laying in a rapidly expanding puddle of mud and viscous water in a depression on the slope's surface. He squatted down and retrieved the weapon, lovingly wiping mud from its gleaming surface, a combination of nostalgia and apprehension on his features. He turned the lightsaber in his hands a few times, acclimating himself to the heft and contours of the grip of a weapon he had not held in decades, momentarily losing himself in memories. Thunder severed the sky above him, shaking him from his reverie, and he stood again, absentmindedly clipping the lightsaber to his belt and allowing himself a small measure of excitement at having such a weapon upon his side once more. Without another look back, Rayf scrambled down the slope, closing the distance between himself and his companions, and coming to Vaevi's other side, so that he might assist the wounded bounty hunter back to the forest floor far below.


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Whatever manner of creature it was that they had succeeded in preparing for their first true meal in an unknown and arduous amount of time, Tama admitted to Nuri that it proved quite delicious. The meat from the avians had been cooked overlong, charred along the edges, and no matter how small of bites the Twi'lek partook of, she could still feel the crispy edges sliding down her esophagus, as though she had just swallowed a mouthful of vibroblades. When the food settled in her stomach, her body seemed to initially regard it as a foreign or even poisonous substance, and her stomach roiled and protested so strongly, Tama almost regurgitated her entire meal. Yet, she forced herself to continue eating, taking her time in doing so, letting her body become accustomed to the sensation of sustenance again, and by the time she had eaten a third of her portion, her appetite had returned with a vengeance. It required all her focus to continue eating at a slow and steady pace, instead of ravenously consuming the rest of the meat allotted her, lest she make herself even more ill.

Most of the rest of her companions did not share the same compunctions. Nuri, Cyran, and Fenn had enough foresight in this regard to take time eating their meals and sipping from the scalding, flat water. But Farr snuffled down his meat as though he had completely forgotten the taste of food, and was beginning to turn a very unique and concerning shade of green as a result. Ossa did not seem to fare much better, for she had already wolfed down half her meal before she had to lean over and heave it back over the edge of the ridge. Ashla barely touched her food, taking miniscule nibbles from the edges and slowly slurping water, her eyes still vacant, focused on horrors only she could see and could not help but continue reliving in the vision of her memory. Vo-Yees and Vibak-Ol ate steadily but with gusto, their stomachs apparently unconcerned with the speed with which they consumed their food. When Nuri asked them if they were going to be okay, Vo-Yees explained in broken Basic that both he and the Gormak boy had been fortunate enough to find several caches of rations and barely-edible food during their harrowing stay in the ruined city, and had thus stayed regularly fed before meeting any of the rest of the children they sat with. Tama heard dark whispers through her ears as the Gran spoke, and a ghastly smell arose in her nostrils, all sensations from the Force. On such a tainted and ill world, she could not be certain of the source of these prickling warning senses, but she suspected that at least some of the supplies they had procured had been done so at the expenditure of another prisoner's blood.

The children huddling atop the ridge said little as they let the fire ebb to fading embers, exuding traces and wisps of smoke as the breeze began to increase its intensity to that of a stiff, moisture-laden wind. The air was thickening as time passed on and clouds began to gather in the atmosphere. Thunder could be heard rumbling through the sky, but the faint sounds of it suggested the storm creating the atmospheric disturbances remained kilometers from them. Tama could not see the storm, but she could see the darkening of the sky overhead, a combination of the fading sun and expanding storm clouds. The oppressive humidity and oncoming darkness had cast a pall upon the group's mood, despite their current fortunes and the food they had managed to procure for themselves.

In spite of these, Tama could not suppress her lifted spirits. For it had been many long moments that she had been in contact with Foyi for the first time in what felt like an eternity. After their telepathic communication had been inexplicably severed, Tama had continued to stretch out with her consciousness as far as it would go, hoping to find Foyi's mind once again in the Dark Side's malaise upon Felucia. But she gave it up for naught, for long-range mental communication, even with someone as close to her as her sister was, was not something she had utilized often, nor had she trained in it. She felt a modicum of her strength returning with the food and water she placed in her stomach, but the exhaustion that had worn on her for so long continued to debilitate her. She could not even determine if Foyi was actively trying to communicate with her over the unknown distance separating them, which would have helped her regain contact. Foyi may have even encountered predators or all manner of horrors lurking in the jungle, and could be actively hiding within the Force. If such was the case, Tama would not find her unless Foyi wished to be found, for her older sister was well-practiced in using the Force for stealth.

Even so, Tama had a general direction from whence she had encountered the brief and wondrous telepathic contact, the simultaneous stimulation of all her senses that had accompanied Foyi's mental cry. A direction in which she could be searching for her sister, or from whence Foyi would come to rescue her. Despite all that Tama and her compatriots had accomplished in order to free themselves, she felt as though she had been stretched beyond her limits far too often as of late, and part of her desperately wished to hide somewhere "the Savior" would not chance to look and await for her sister's imminent rescue. She was tired of pain, hunger, exhaustion, sleeplessness, and the nagging extrasensory perceptions at the very perimeters of her being, the unending whispers of the Dark Side and the telepathic search patterns of their kidnapper as he searched the jungle far and wide for those whom had escaped his clutches. For once, Tama was glad of the spiritual mire created by the Dark Side's taint on Felucia, as it undoubtedly made their captor's frantic searches for the escapees incredibly difficult.

Tama snapped out of her reverie when she felt bony fingers shaking her shoulder. Her eyes flickered rapidly as she shook herself from her stupor, then turned to see Nuri sitting beside her, her narrow hand clasped upon the Twi'lek girl's shoulder. "Hey! Galaxy to Tama! You still with us?"

Tama nodded wearily. "I...was concentrating. Trying to...reestablish communication."

Nuri pointed to her head quizzically. "With your mind?"

"With the Force."

A frightened look came to the Zabrak's face. "You're not talking to...him, are you?"

Tama could not suppress the smile that curved her lips. "Thank the Force, no. He's still out there...somewhere. Occasionally I get flashes of insight from him; he's angry and desperate and is still looking for us, but I don't think he has any idea where we've gone. No, I've just made contact with my sister...she's here to rescue me. To rescue us."

"From Yanibar?" Nuri asked. "She's come a long way."

"Of course. Once she sets her mind on something, she pursues it till its conclusion. It's really annoying at most times, but I'm not complaining that she's come all this way for me."

Nuri considered her words, her expression becoming more enthusiastic as she contemplated the presence of someone who had come from the far reaches of the Outer Rim to willingly plunge into the planet's hellish jungles. "And...she's here? That means she has to have a ship!"

Tama nodded. "That's why I said I knew how we would finally get off this mudhole. She must have gotten here by a ship, and considering she's close by, so is our ride out of this nightmare."

Nuri looked about in the growing darkness, peering into the jungle beyond and below the ridge upon which they sat, as though she could spot Foyi moving through the fronds and fungi toward them at that very moment. "How close is 'close by'?"

Tama massaged her temples, her _lekku_ curling reflexively around her throat and shoulders in response to the ache in her head that shot through her teeth, her jaw, and down into her neck. "I don't know...a few klicks, maybe. We only 'spoke' for a few seconds, enough to give each other impressions of our locations and vague directions; the Force isn't an exact science, especially on this world."

"So...your sister's like you too? Is she as good with the Force as you are?"

Tama scoffed, thinking of how long it had taken her to complete the stone and ring exercise, how frustrated she had continually been with both herself and Foyi. "She's better. Way more advanced than me, having spent years in practice, whereas I'm still barely a student. _Her_ student, actually. She is a fully-fledged Zeison Sha Warrior. If anyone can find us in these jungles and rescue us from 'the Savior', it would be her. She can do practically anything."

Nuri carefully ate the last bit of the meat allotted her, savoring every haphazardly cooked bite. "I feel better about our chances out in this jungle already. How do we find her?"

Tama's _tchun_ shivered in irritation. "I've been trying to pin her down ever since I lost contact with her a few moments ago. I'm afraid...afraid that she ran into some trouble, and is trying to hide within the Force. Or maybe it's just this planet. Or how badly I suck at telepathy. It might be better if we wait for her to find us...she's the one who reached out to me, after all."

Nuri picked up the A280 Blaster Rifle lying beside her and checked the charge on the current power pack. "We might not have the luxury of waiting. From what little I know of Felucia, there are already plenty of scary as Sith predators wandering these jungles, and now that we brought down those ray shields, all the beasts that mudcrutch was keeping locked in with us are somewhere out here, probably looking for something youngling-sized to snack on. And if 'the Savior' has anymore battle droids, he'll have sent them out looking for us. If we stay here, we might find ourselves besieged up here, and I know you and I can handle ourselves, as long as we have the ammunition, but I'm not as confident in everyone here. Fenn, Farr, and Cyran all fought well against the droids in the courtyard, but I don't know enough about the rest of 'em." Nuri dropped her voice as she said this, her eyes wandering over the visages of everyone huddled around the glowering embers and swirling ashes as temperatures began to drop, the harbinger of the storm to come. Most were fully-engaged in consuming their sustenance, though Ossa still found time to have a one-sided conversation with the withdrawn Ashla, whose despondency seemed to slowly be evolving into aggravation at the Nautolan's insistent prattle. At least she appeared to be experiencing an emotion that was not sadness or fear.

Tama similarly dropped her voice. "They've survived so far."

"I got the impression from talking to them that they were just lucky enough to be near the edges of the ray shield when we destroyed it. And I don't think they did much fighting, mostly hiding and trying to stay alive."

Tama gave her a concerned look. "We can't blame them for doing that. It's not their fault that they were kidnapped and thrown into that den of droids and monsters."

"True. But that tells us nothing of what they might do or are capable of if it comes to a fight."

Tama gave a weary sigh. "Then we'll just have to fight for them. We can't let that madman take anymore lives."

Nuri smirked. "It'd probably help if we could get that rancor back on our side."

Tama shook her head, the memories of the rancor's pain and feelings of betrayal rising to the forefront of her mind in an unwanted and simmering sea of emotion. "I'm...not doing that again anytime soon. Ever, if I can help it. It was...too much for me to handle."

"You saved our lives with your abilities."

Tama looked away in embarrassment, her expression maudlin. "You can thank me when we're actually off this planet."

The Gormak boy, who had finished the portion of meat granted him, gave both the Twi'lek and Zabrak girls a look that seemed to indicate he was now contemplating eating them to satisfy his ravenous hunger. "Wot yo talky 'bout?"

Tama turned away from him, not wishing to meet the eerily intense gaze he levered her way. Nuri, not intimidated in the slightest, met the Gormak's stare with one of her own. Tama could feel the tension between the two like another layer of the atmosphere solidified by their locked regards. "Tama says she might have a way out of here, which presents us all with a choice."

"A way out?" Ossa exclaimed loud enough to make most around the dying fire wince at the volume.

"How? With your all-powerful Force?" Fenn asked suspiciously.

Foyi ignored his derision; if he remained skeptical of the Force's existence and power, despite all that he had seen and experienced on this day, there was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise. "I just discovered my sister has come here, to Felucia, looking for me. If we can meet up with her, we can get off this planet and escape in the ship she came in with."

"Sister owns ship?" Farr asked hopefully.

"You have a sister?" came Ossa's flurried response. "Is she all 'Forceful' like you?"

"How did you discover this?" Fenn also asked simultaneously.

Tama raised both of her palms outward to ward away further questions. "My sister can use the Force like I can, yes. She contacted me in much the same way 'the Savior' has been ever since we got here, and told me that she's here to rescue me." She gave Ossa a long-suffering glance. "'Forceful' isn't actually a word we use to describe...people like me."

"Only you?" Fenn asked.

Tama rubbed her forehead again; her migraine was only growing worse, and her stomach was feeling rather unsettled from the meat and water she had just put into it. "I'm sure she only knows about me, and of course she came across the galaxy for me. We're _sisters_. But if we find her, I know she will take everyone along. No, my sister doesn't own a ship, and I don't know how and when she got here. But you don't get to different planets without a ship, so if she's nearby, her ship can't be far from here."

Cyran asked a question, her visage contorted by what Tama assumed was the Duros' equivalent of a hopeful expression. Nuri listened intently, then turned back to the Twi'lek. "She wants to know how far your sister is."

"I don't know, exactly. A few kilometers, maybe? We only 'talked' for a moment, long enough to ensure each other that we're all alive. I think, if I focus long enough, I can find her, but I need...rest first."

"Convenient," Farr huffed.

"Shut your snout, barve face!" Ossa nearly shouted at the Rodian, who had the presence of mind to look abashed. " Forceful people need rest like everyone else!" She then gave the Twi'lek girl a sheepish glance. "Right?"

Tama forced herself not to sigh in exasperation. "I just said that..."

Nuri clapped her hands together to draw everyone's attention. "Tama says her sister's here, and if she's here, she's got a ship that'll get us the hell offworld. She's got the Force, just like Tama, only she's stronger; some kind of Zipper Shawl Warrior or something." Tama snorted in a weary chuckle, and Nuri allowed a tiny grin to quirk the corners of her mouth before continuing. "Chances are, if we get to her soon, we can all get out of this nightmare, and if the bastard who stole us from our homes comes after us, she'll be equipped with weapons and Force abilities to fight him off. That's an option that would require us venturing out into the forests and meeting up with her. Which means we would have to follow Tama until she has a more definite idea of where to meet her sister, or her sister contacts her again. But Tama also says her sister has a pretty good idea where we are, so if we wait here, it'll be easier for her to come to us. Though there's no guarantee that 'the Savior' and his clankers, or the other monsters out there, won't find us before she does. Which means if we remain here, we would have to be prepared to defend this position from enemies. And considering not all of us have blasters, and some of those blasters are low on ammo, I doubt our ability to withstand a siege for long."

"But other option would make us run through jungle, yeah?" Vo-Yees added for clarification.

"Neither option sounds good to me," Fenn huffed.

"We're in the middle of an uncharted jungle surrounding the prison we just escaped from, hunted by rancors, kell dragons, battle droids, and psychopaths," Nuri replied incredulously. "None of our options are good. That's why we _all_ have to choose, and hope whatever we decide on is the lesser evil."

Fenn conceded the point with a flick of his ears and a shivering patch of fur on his cheeks. Nuri opened her mouth to speak again, but paused when a peal of thunder split the sky, close enough to set their ears ringing and their bodies shivering with the atmospheric vibrations. Reflexively, everyone looked up into the haze and dim light to see angry, dark clouds covering the sky, casting Felucia under a darkness impregnated with moisture both slick and oily that settled into their hair and skins. Rain was so imminent, it felt as though the charged atmosphere around them would suddenly exude droplets of rain and soak them through. For her part, Tama almost welcomed the idea of rain, as the tears of rain sure to fall might finally liberate her from the sensation of a suffocating layer of grime, sweat, and toxins lying between her epidermis and the thin rags that had once been her clothes.

Vibak-Ol was the first to speak after the atmospheric interruption. "No wet. Under trees, cover."

Nuri's brow rose in accordance with her question. "Are you saying you'd rather go looking for Tama's sister and the ship than stay here?"

Vibak-Ol bared his fearsome teeth. "If Tama can find, yes. If not, Vibak-Ol find. Huntin' good, ya."

Nuri shrugged, ignoring the brief flash of light accompanying a lightning strike down into the endless, undulating seas of mushrooms below. "There's one for searching the forests."

Farr gave Vibak-Ol a reproachful glance, then stood on shaky legs. "Rodian proud, bestest hunters. I will find her."

Tama shook her head at the Rodian's assertion, but appreciated the support for this option. She realized how dangerous the jungles were, and she could feel so many presences slinking through the forests, injured and tainted by the Dark Side. But now that she knew Foyi was out there, somewhere in the fungus and darkness, searching for her, she did not wish to stay in one place any longer. She needed rest and rejuvenation, but she did not even want to pause long enough for that. She just wanted to get to Foyi, to wrap her in an embrace and ask forgiveness for all the times she had been difficult, for all the times she had blamed her mistakes and shortcomings on her sister. Her sister, who only wished to protect her, to give her a proper education in the Force that had been denied Foyi and so many other prospective Zeison Sha by the Empire. She just wanted to feel the safety and spiritual completion that came with being with her only family. She licked her lips and said, "As long as I can rest for a little bit, I'm confident I can find my sister. If you're willing to follow me, we'll find her and she'll take us away from this planet."

Cyran gave a lengthy discourse in Durese, and those gathered turned to stare at Nuri for the translation. "Cyran says if Tama's sister is already looking for us, we would only be making it more difficult for her to find us if we're out wandering in the forests. Instead, we could hole up here, or find a place we can take shelter, and make it defensible. We've fought the battle droids before and came out on top, and we barely had any cover when we did so. She says that unless there are creatures on this planet taller than a rancor, no predators should be able to reach to the top of this ridge and grab us. That way, Tama could get some rest, and instead of using her power to lead us through the jungles, she could remain in one place and send a constant...Force beacon for her sister to find and follow." Nuri turned to Tama. "That...actually makes a lot of sense. I say we try something like that?"

"I thought you said we couldn't withstand a siege."

"I didn't say we _couldn't_. I said our chances were doubtful. But we've bested the odds through proper planning and teamwork before. And now we are so many more than we were; we could do it, if we work together. In tandem. Maybe."

Fenn raised the DL-44 that had been sitting in his lap. "I like that idea. I've gotten to be a pretty good shot with this thing, and I'm sure I could blast plenty of droids before they even got close enough to make us sweat."

Vo-Yees was already shaking his head as the Bothan spoke, his trio of eyes upon articulated stalks blinking rapidly. "We waitin' 'ere, we waitin' for to get blasted, yeah? We stay in one place, easier it being for Voice to find us, yeah? I'm sayin' we getting' outta here, as long as you can actually find your sister."

"I can," Tama replied, feigning confidence she did not feel.

"I'm with her!" Ossa exclaimed, indicating Tama with a wild gesture of her hand and a writhing shiver through her own headtails. "I don't want to stay here any longer than we have to. If Tama can lead us through the jungle to her sister and her ship, then I don't see any reason we have to sit around and wait. We did enough waiting in that fripping city, and there were still things trying to kill us. No matter what we do, there'll be things trying to kill us, and I'd rather be on the move, staying one step ahead of them, instead of sitting on my ass up here, just waiting for him and his droids or anymore dragons to come and kill us."

Tama nodded. It was not a particularly eloquent defense of her own opinion, but the Nautolan had brought up a valid point, one that coincided with Nuri's previous sentiments. Neither one of the options presented them were ideal, and both were fraught with unknowns. Tama was not comfortable with the fact that both were contingent on her Force abilities, and her capability of reestablishing telepathic contact with her sister. But since she had been trapped on this planet, she had reached far past her previous limits in the Force, accomplishing things she had not thought possible for one so relatively untrained as herself. She would just have to trust in the Force, and in the hope that when the time came, she would be up to the task presented her, and once again surpass her limits.

A crack of thunder made the very stone of the ridge beneath them rumble, causing most of the children gathered jump in momentary surprise. All eyes were instead drawn to the shivering Togruta girl, who sat the closest to the dying flames, and had not once looked up from the glowing ashes. Nuri leaned forward, scooting across the stone and moss to draw closer to the girl. "Ashla? What do you think we should do?"

The Togruta continued to stare into the ashes, but a slight twitch in her expression suggested that she was considering the question. This was not apparent to all present, however, for Ossa similarly leaned forward and nearly shouted, "Hey! She asked you a question."

Nuri jabbed a threatening finger at the Nautolan who had drawn far too close to both the Zabrak and the Togruta for Nuri's comfort. "If you don't stop yelling every word you speak and chill, I'm going to grab you by your headtails and throw you right over the edge."

While Ashla continued to shiver, Ossa shrank back from Nuri's rebuke, her large, dark eyes taking on a gleam that might have been shame, but could have also been anger. Nuri turned from her and back to Ashla, who had moved so close to the remains of the fire that she was practically kneeling in it. The Togruta girl's gaze finally lifted from her knees, but she did not quite meet anyone's eyes. "I...don't want to...stay here any longer. I don't want...to wait."

Nuri pursed her lips, but nodded her assent. "We've voted, and we've agreed on a verdict then. Tama will lead us through the jungles to find her sister. There are going to be untold numbers of dangers out there, so everyone has to remain alert and ready to flee or fight at a moment's notice. We have to keep an eye out for everyone, so we all stick together, right? Cover each others flanks, keep eyes out on everything around us. Those with blasters will guard the sides and bring up the rear; we're not letting anymore beasts get the drop on us. We keep low, we move fast, and we follow Tama's senses in the Force, because they're more acute than any of ours."

Farr made a wet snort. "Doubt it."

Nuri ignored him and continued speaking. "So we should get ourselves a little rest."

"After we make a shelter," Fenn suggested, self-consciously running a hand through his greasy, mud-slicked fur. "As much as I crave a good sanisteam, and that coming rain is probably the closest thing we'll get for awhile, I don't like the idea of catching some respiratory illness from getting too wet and cold."

"Good point," Nuri nodded. She scrambled to the edge of the ridge and looked down the slopes, gazing at several large species of fungi crowding the base of the cleft. "Let's see if we can detach one of those mushroom caps and bring it back up here for shelter." She slung her blaster rifle across her back and began to pick her way down the slopes. Without prompting, Fenn joined her, climbing slowly behind her. He was joined shortly by Vibak-Ol, who was grumbling something in his native language as he crawled over the edge of the ridge. Lightning flashed across the sky, chased by a truly terrifying shriek of thunder and the roar of the wind gaining speed. The storm that had been brewing and threatening to unleash its fury upon the tortured landscape of Felucia for the past few hours had finally arrived overhead, and it could be any amount of time before the rain lashed down with vengeance. Tama's eyes were drawn from the thunderheads as black as the void of space when she detected an intense stare upon her person, and her eyes met those of Ashla's.

"You...you can lead us? You can...get us away...from here?" she asked in a quavering voice.

"I'll do my best. I promise."

Ashla seemed slightly heartened by that, but her expression remained withdrawn and grim. She turned to look back into the embers and began to rock back and forth on her haunches. As she did so, the first drops of rain began to fall, and Tama hugged herself closer, awaiting the construction of a shelter that might allow her to gain some sleep. And with sleep, hopefully she would be able to draw upon the Force in the capacity that would be required, for more than her own life depended on her capabilities once again.

Tama let the rain slip down her _lekku_ and neck and shivered, a reaction prompted not by the precipitation impacting with her skin, but rather by the prospect of being unable to find Foyi in the morass of mushrooms and the Dark Side.

* * *

The mushroom cap that Nuri, Fenn, and Vibak-Ol managed to lever atop the ridge proved to be more than adequate for keeping the children relatively free of the storm's ferocity. The cap of the mushroom was a hoary, slimy, roughly circular mass of fungal flesh that was surprising light despite its size, being a little under three meters in diameter, which made it incredibly awkward to lever back up to the top of the ridge. But Nuri, Fenn, and Vibak-Ol proved themselves to be up to the task, sliding it up the slope, balanced between them, until it was high enough that the children atop the cliff could seize its edges and pull it atop the ridge. From there, they pulled some of the scattered rocks and shattered shards of the cliffside ascending above them in small piles near the puddles of ashes and soot that had once been their fire. These piles of stone and lichens were used as supports for the severed mushroom's cap, which was propped up at an acute angle facing into the wind-lashed sheets of rain that were now falling from the turbulent skies above, the curved surface of the fungal material causing the rain to pour in rivulets and streams along the edges of the cap and down the ridge's sides. The former prisoners huddled together beneath the cap's inky shadows. Though they had all been thoroughly soaked by the rain, they were given the opportunity to let their oily, grungy skin and grimy, tattered clothes dry. And to catch what sleep they were able to, the food settling in their bellies and their continuing exhaustion lulling them into varying depths of sleep.

Tama's sleep was fitful, causing her to rise and descend from the depths of oblivious slumber, leaving her in a fugue state in which she remained for an unknown period of time. She had no dreams that she could remember, though she had flashes of images, of impressions beyond herself that may or may have not been real. She heard the sound of the rain drumming on the fungal shelter above her, saw the wavering silhouette of Nuri as she crouched near the edge of the shelter, the barrel of her blaster directed at the darkness beyond, the snores of one of the other children a guttural wheeze thick with phlegm. These sensations, if they even existed around her, blurred into the infrequent periods of darkness and loss of sensation that constituted sleep. These blissful moments became more frequent, and merged together into the closest thing to true sleep she had accomplished in as long as she could remember.

It was with reluctance that she awoke from her slumber, groggily turning over from where she had lain on her side to look into the furtive gazes of Nuri and Ossa, both of whom were leaning over her. Tama sat bolt upright in momentary fright, nearly slamming her forehead into Nuri's as she came upright. Nuri jumped back, almost toppling Ossa in the process. "Wha—Wha' do ya want?" Tama slurred as she furiously tried to rub the sleep from her eyes.

Nuri looked apologetic, but determined as well. "The rain's stopped...well, slowed, rather. It's just spitting now, and we're waking everyone up so we can get moving. I don't think anyone here wants to stay any longer than we have to, so we're gonna be ready to move...as long as you are."

Tama glanced at the Zabrak through her fingers. "I thought you voted to stay here."

Nuri bit her lower lip. "I was outvoted, remember? I've got a really bad feeling about walking through the jungle, but I trust in you and your abilities. If anyone can lead us out of here and to your sister, it'll be you."

Tama turned away so that Nuri could not see the grimace of apprehension she knew to be on her features, peering out from beneath the black shadows of the mushroom cap shelter. The ridge beyond their makeshift lean-to was decorated by lakes and rivers of water in microcosm, where the rain had filled in depressions and fractures in the ridge's surface. The water was so fervent in its erosive predilections that whole colonies of mold and lichens had sloughed off the lip of the ridge and into the dark, storm-tossed jungles below. It was still abysmally dark, and she could see the brief glimmers of rain drops falling through the sky to spatter the canopies below, as well as the sheen of moisture that seemed to permeate every surface, producing a strange, kaleidoscopic illumination in the faint glows of phosphorescent fungi. The jungles beautiful in a haunting way.

The others began to move around her as Ossa and Nuri woke them, accompanied by many groans and curses of protest. Tama ignored the distracting noises and tentatively reached out to the Force, letting it flow into her, enhancing her natural senses. She did not feel the overwhelming wave of fatigue she had feared upon touching it, suggesting that what little sleep she had acquired had had some positive effects upon her supernatural abilities. But with the Force's touch came Felucia's Dark Side affinity, and she grimaced as the whispers became loud, yammering voices in her ears. Reflexively, she clapped her hands to her ears and concentrated on looking past the oppressive Dark Side, searching for the familiar sounds, smells, and images that formed a bundle of existence that she thought of as her sister. She reached for untold kilometers over Felucia's surface, sending a klaxon in all directions, attempting to alert Foyi to her presence.

But Foyi did not answer. Or could not answer.

Tama suppressed the fear that that possibility inspired in her, threatening to strangle her. She already had an impression of the direction and location from whence Foyi's contact had been directed, and thus it was not difficult, after concentrated searching, to find the remnants of Foyi's presence. The images, smells, and sounds she had left behind in her passing, as though her sister had shouted within an expansive room and the echoes of that voice lingered still. It was not Foyi herself, but the Force remembered her presence, how she had drawn upon it to search for Tama. Such uses left distinct footprints within the limitless energy field, footprints that spurred memories and sensations of her sister unbidden, but not unwelcome.

Tama opened her eyes again, letting her senses recede from the Force, but still feeling that phantasm of Foyi's passage and presence, like a blip on her hazy mental radar that barely registered, and yet continued to draw her toward it in a vacuous, gravitic pull. She turned to the others, all of whom were awake once again, though few seemed happy about it. Farr's coloration had changed to a more natural hue, and he appeared to be feeling better after his momentary bout with whatever alien bacteria had been in the water he had so foolishly partaken of. Ashla was still downtrodden, and barely breathed as she gathered herself for their journey, though Tama could feel a spark of life in her, as if a flickering light that had been dimmed had awoken. In this way, she shared the same mix of enthusiasm and apprehension that they all felt at the prospect of venturing out into the deadly and dark jungles once again. Nuri turned from a brief conversation with Fenn, then faced Tama. "Do you have a course plotted for us, Tama?"

Tama mustered more courage and confidence in her life than she actually felt as she nodded. She could no longer be strong just for herself. "I do. I can feel my sister out there, and I'll lead us to her, and she'll take us all away on her ship."

Fenn's ears twitched forward in consternation. "What happens if she moves from where she is now?"

Tama kept her expression neutral as her eyes met the Bothan's gaze in the darkness beneath their shelter. "I can sense her wherever she goes on this planet, as long as I maintain my focus. It doesn't matter where she moves." While this was certainly true, Tama felt it best to leave out the fact that she could not currently sense Foyi's presence, and would be only able to follow a ghost of her existence until Foyi decided to open up to her once again. If she ever would. If she was still alive.

Tama scooped up the E-5 Blaster Rifle she had laid beside her as she slept, then slung it over her back and approached the edge of the ridge on stiff and sore legs. The aches in her limbs only grew as she began to climb down the wet slopes of that ridge, her fingers and toes struggling to maintain purchase on the slippery fractures and depressions she used to support herself, slipping in mud and thick tangles of fungi and moss. Obese tears of rain splattered the top of her head, dripping down her neck and spine, and sliding along her arms and legs. She concentrated on maintaining her balance and sticking to the ridge's nearly shear slope, and so focused upon safely lowering herself was she that she did not realize she had reached the ground until her toes found themselves submersed in mud. Tama dropped the rest of the way to the forest floor, then stood at the base of the slope and reached up, helping everyone who climbed down after her, until they had all reached the ground once more.

Tama unslung her blaster and gripped it tight as she peered into the shifting shadows, interspersed with phosphorescent plants and the glints of spurting raindrops catching and refracting those dim glows. The wind's howls were not as frightening or overwhelming beneath the fungal canopies, though the sounds of groans and creaks as the stalks, fronds, and mushrooms constituting the jungle submitted to the winds' power was deafening. It would be incredibly difficult to hear any predators or enemies lurking in the darkness nearby, and with her use of the Force almost exclusively focused upon following the traces left behind by her sister, it was unlikely she would be able to sense any approaching threats until it was too late. She turned to Nuri, and glanced at the other children huddled around, all of whom were peering into the jungle with fear and suspicion. "Keep an eye out. I probably won't be able to warn anyone in time if we run across any droids or monsters. Not if I have to concentrate on finding my sister first."

Nuri tightened her grip on her blaster rifle. "We'll cover you. You lead us." Her expression softened slightly. "You've got this, right?"

"We'll see." Without further words, Tama plunged into the jungle, leading the troupe of escaped prisoners on a trek through the darkness and fungus, clambering up and down ridges and through shallow gulleys, across raging streams that forced them to wade through, the water sometimes reaching up to their chests in height. The soaring canopies above them cast the jungles in darkness, though the phosphorescent illumination of the sickly plants created a strange twilight in which they walked, as though they were meandering through a dreary, dreamlike version of reality. Occasionally, they met random sheets of rain, where the spaces between the immense diameters of the towering mushrooms were large enough to admit the precipitation falling upon the planet below. Tama had little consideration for the terrain they were clambering and crawling over, leading their company in as straight of a path as she could, trying to cross the unknown distance between their current position and where she had last sensed Foyi.

Fortunately, the others kept up with the pace the Twi'lek set, despite all their aches and injuries, the hope that they would soon find themselves off this nightmare world sustaining them and granting them the stamina to keep moving. The occasional rustling and snaps in the underbrush not far from the path they forged also served as motivation for their hurried pace. Tama could sense the essences of other creatures as fleeting glimpses and faint whiffs of unique aromas as they passed, but her danger sense had yet to alert her of approaching foes. She did not focus too much on these other essences, for all those armed behind her kept their attention to the sides and behind their group, their blasters sweeping back and forth to cover the darkest regions from which new threats might jump.

Tama was unaware of exactly how much time they had already spent in the jungle. She concentrated on piercing the cloying, roiling strands of the Dark Side that endeavored to weave a web of temptation and confusion about her, using her connection to Foyi as the lifeline that kept her sane. She could still not sense Foyi herself, though the area in which she had detected traces of her presence was nearby now. The ground at their feet was becoming more difficult to navigate, the mud giving way to jagged shards of stone, covered and fractured by moss and lichens that stubbornly continued to break them apart in their erosive pursuits. The ground was sloping upward in several undulating hills and ridges, surrounded by slopes and gorges that sometimes dropped so sharply, their true depths were hidden in darkness, their slopes carved with the trails of water driven downward by Felucia's gravity. The jungle had grown thick, twisted, and gnarled here, so that there barely remained space for them to walk between the individual plants in single file.

Tama slipped between a pair of bulbous stalks swaying in the wind, her hands pressing against their slimy, moist sides in a vain effort to push them farther apart. She forced herself to continue further as quickly as she was able, for she could feel the specter of her sister nearby, so close now, she could practically taste a sweetness on her tongue that signified happier times for her. She looked back to see how close to her the others were, and found herself mildly disconcerted to find that it was Ossa who had slipped directly behind her. The Nautolan coughed after squeezing between the stalks, gasping for breath and managing to also block the passage of Nuri, who was trying to slip past directly behind her. "How...much further?" Ossa whined in between gasps.

Tama shook her head. "Not far. We've almost made it...I'm sure of it."

Nuri gave a frustrated groan and reached between the individual fungi, giving the Nautolan a shove forward. "Ossa, if you're going to walk in the front, quit standing in one flaming place all the time."

Ossa whirled around on quivering legs, anger suffusing her emaciated frame. "Quit pushing me around!" she shouted back, unnecessarily and frighteningly loud. Despite her anger, she stepped to the side to let the others push through the bulbous specimens, and as she planted her foot down on a large shard of smoothed and flattened rock, the rock slid out from under her weight, descending the sharply-angled slope on its opposite side as much of the mud that defined the ridge they stood upon began to give way. Nuri lost her balance immediately, but she fell between the two concentric stacks of transparent bulbs and stayed put. Farr cursed in Rodese as he fell on his side, and Cyran uttered a shriek of surprise as she took a tumble down the opposite side of the ridge, where she fell into a small depression and caught herself in a thicket of tubular fronds. The others managed to keep their feet, or dropped into crouches or on their bellies to remain atop the ridge. Tama surprised herself by simply bending her knees in a steady crouch as some of the mud fell away from her with a horrid slurping sound. She threw her arms out to regain her equilibrium, then looked back to make certain everyone remained whole.

She turned in time to see Ossa's feet lose their traction completely, flying out from under her, and sending the unfortunate girl tumbling along with the blanket of mud. With a shriek, she disappeared from sight, down the slope and into the inky blackness of a ravine to the side of the ridge.

Nuri cursed, wriggling from where she had been wedged between the large stalks and scrambling to the edge of the ravine, which was still weeping sheets of mud. "Ossa! _Ossa!_ " she called frantically. "Ossa, answer me!"

"She dead," Vibak-Ol remarked from where he clung to the uppermost part of the ridge, his guttural tones sounding completely unconcerned.

From within the depths of rain-soaked darkness that was the ravine came a spluttering noise, followed by a splash. "I'm not dead, you bishwag! I just fell in alotta mud...stars, I'm all slimy now!"

Nuri rolled her eyes in such an exasperated manner, Tama could see the gesture clearly, despite the oppressive darkness. Fenn returned to a standing position, a smile quirking his lips. "I think she's alright..."

Tama strode carefully back to Nuri's side and crouched, letting her shoes sink into the mud to keep her in one place as she craned her neck forward in an attempt to peer into the complete darkness of the ravine beyond. She could sense Ossa's presence down there, but she could not see her. "Ossa! Can you climb out?!"

There came the sounds of struggle, a grunt, followed by a truly lurid string of expletives. "I don't think so! All the sides are made of mud, and there's water down here too! Maybe if it fills up a little more, I could swim my way out!"

"How full is it? Are you in danger of drowning?"

"Seriously?!" came the shrieking reply.

Tama gave Nuri a completely befuddled look, and the Zabrak did her best to hide her smile. "She's a Nautolan," she answered in a low tone. "They're amphibious, and breathe water."

"Oh," Tama replied self-consciously.

"Let's find somethin' ta pull up wit', yeah?" Vo-Yees suggested.

The others began to spread out down the more gentle slopes of the ridge, looking for something lengthy and pliable enough to be used like a rope or support that Ossa could grab upon and be hauled up by. Both Vibak-Ol and Farr grumbled about the irritating personality and clumsiness of the girl, but Cyran assaulted them both with such a stern and abrasive string of Durese, they did not have to understand the language to comprehend what she was trying to communicate. She was vehement enough in her rebuke that they both ceased their complaining and concentrated on finding something to help the unfortunate Nautolan. Tama briefly considered trying to reach out to the girl with the Force and lift her telekinetically from the pit, but she was even less confident in her stunted abilities with telekinesis than she was in her capability of locating Foyi. Plus she could not see Ossa, which presented almost an impossibility for her. She began searching the ridges, approaching the thicket of tubular fungi that Cyran had taken a fall into and gripping the base of one of those strands, pulling as hard as she could until the cylindrical and surprisingly flexible specimen was separated from its roots. She brought the fungal strand before her and pulled on both sides, only for the plant to pull apart in the middle and exude a splash of ichor in the mud. _Well, that won't work._

"You guys had better not have left me down here!" came Ossa's frustrated and angered shout.

"I have an idea," Fenn announced, ignoring Ossa's continued grousing. "Why don't we detach the straps from our blasters, hook 'em together, and make a rope that way?"

It was simple and innovative, and the others nodded their agreement to the plan almost immediately, while Vo-Yees remarked with a grunt. "Stellar plan, yup." Those armed with blaster rifles detached the carrying straps from their weapons, crafted from tough nerf leather and fiber meshes, though some of the straps seemed circumspect in their ability to hold any significant weight due to their ages and the prevalence of frayed fibers along their edges. But when properly fastened together and yanked at both ends, the resulting length held its composition. Nuri took the length in her hands and crept to the edge of the pitch-black ravine, straining to see their trapped companion. "Ossa! Watch your headtails!" That was the only warning given as she tossed the length into the depths, the connections where the individual straps had been hooked together _klinking_ as the makeshift rope slapped wetly against the slope of the ravine.

Tama, Fenn, and Vibak-Ol each grasped the opposite end of the coil, joining Nuri in bracing for the weight of the Nautolan they would have to haul up a sheer ravine's slope. They waited for the inevitable tug and Ossa's incessant vociferations...and continued waiting as a lengthy moment passed. Nuri cocked a concerned eyebrow, then leaned forward again in a vain attempt to see the girl below. "Ossa? You blind? We're _waiting_."

Tama tentatively reached out to the Force again, attempting to sense Ossa's presence in the ravine below. But her concentration was broken by a sudden, frenetic series of splashes from the gorge's depths, followed by something that sounded like a groan or a grunt. Those not actively holding onto the "rope" gathered at the edge of the lip of the slope, trying to pierce the darkness with their own gazes. Tama felt a growing feeling of dread in her gut, and the Dark Side's tireless whispers were becoming more exultant, harder to ignore. "Something's wrong..." she muttered, only partially aware of her physical surroundings anymore as Felucia's tainted essence threatened to crush her beneath its metaphysical weight.

Nuri sensed something was wrong as well, for she shouted louder this time. "Ossa! Can you hear us? Ossa! Answer me!"

The others began to call her name, but their shouts were cut short by the sounds of more splashing, followed by something that sounded like a strangled shriek or a wild animal. Nuri immediately dropped the length of the rope they had fashioned and ran to one of the larger stalks of mushrooms squatting atop the ridge, using the rusty old vibroknife to cut away a large section of its bole, which glowed an eerie blue, casting her features into a lurid, cerulean light. She ran past the other children and tossed the chunk of fungal flesh into the ravine, scooping up her A280 in the same motion. She shouldered the rifle and aimed it down the slope as the fungal slab plunged below, illuminating the contours of the slope, the "rope" dangling down to the mud-swirled water, before it splashed into the water, sending out blue-tinged ripples across the pool of mud and rainwater collected in the bottom of the gorge. Those ripples were almost immediately diverted when they caught upon a large, oblong object floating on the water's surface, and the light from the bobbing hunk of phosphorescence brought the contours of that shape into focus. There was a collective gasp of shock and fear as the children realized the floating object was Ossa, lying on her back, her large, dark eyes so wide they were practically bulging from their sockets, peering from a ghastly mask that had once been her face. Her malnourished body had become shockingly skeletal, as though all the remaining muscle, interior tissues and organs, had been excised entirely, leaving little more than a sack of skin stretched taut over protruding bones. Even her headtresses, splayed out from her cranium like limp hair, had diminished in width and length, looking more like scraggly tendrils barely affixed to her head. Tama did not have to reach out to her in the Force to know that Ossa was dead; the stench of future decay and a whisper of fear reached her nose and ears as she looked down upon the corpse.

"She dead!" Farr practically squealed, stating the obvious.

"Impossible!" Vo-Yees cried in denial. "She being Nautolan! No Nautolan drown!"

The sinking feeling in Tama's gut had become a weight of carbonite, constricting her breathing. Her danger sense was rising rapidly, all of her senses urging her to back away, to flee as fast and as far as her legs could carry her, to hide in the depths of the jungle and never emerge. The skin on her _lekku_ was practically vibrating with the sensation that she was being watched by a presence that held only ill will toward her.

It came as no surprise then, as the children continued to stare at the remains of one of their own, that their captor's voice swam through the morass of their minds, cutting through their thoughts like a blaster bolt scything shimmersilk. _You strive, you claw, you bite and scurry. Hurry hurry hurry run as fast as you can. It won't stop, it'll never stop, please save us save us it has to end somewhere. The Universe is hungry, it has been wronged. It sent us to shepherd and guide, to expose the darkness, the devilsquid's ink blotting the flimsiplast of your souls. Only through the exposure of light, of truth and realization can the Universe be satisfied. Your sins, our sins, my sins all sins must be cleansed. Let us do it. Make us stop. It happened, it happens again and again. Evil born anew, again and again; they won't stop breeding and the darkness doesn't ever go away. You thought you were clever, you thought you were pretty. But you are Barabels in the skins of Chadra-Fan, always pretending, putting on masks and hiding, grasping and holding the darkness close, the sins that make the Universe retch and boil. You can't escape yourselves, and we can't escape us. The Universe demands, reality must be balanced and remade. Sins must be taken, lest they fester and grow and drown all that is light in darkness. We're here. I'm here. The darkness within you must be cleansed, and we will help you find peace, find truth and rightness in death._

The voice was not so painful this time as it worked its way through their minds; indeed, it was barely a whisper compared to the Force-enhanced scream that had debilitated most of them and summarily killed Otar. But there was a cold quality to it, one that sent Tama into shivers, as though the passion and desperation for his twisted sense of morality had been abandoned completely. "The Savior" was out in the jungle with them, maybe following them the entire way they fled and trekked across the untamed forests, only to take advantage of one of their number being separated from the whole. And he had just killed Ossa with...something. Tama could not fathom what exactly this creature had done to end the Nautolan's life in such a way, but she was confident that some dark use of the Force was behind it. And if he was nearby, she was their only line of defense against such supernatural powers; she doubted her ability to fight another Force-user while healthy and hale, much less in her current condition. The Twi'lek peeled herself form the stupor the Voice had lain upon her mind like a shroud over her eyes, numbly hefting her weapon and forcing those nearest her back to their feet. "We have to run. Now!"

"Wha'?" Vibak-Ol gurgled loudly.

Tama was about to repeat herself more vehemently, hoping her raised voice would shock the others from their forced stupors, when Nuri suddenly stood up with her blaster raised and fired back indiscriminately over the ridge, in the direction from whence they had walked. Fenn cried out as two of those blaster bolts connected with his chest, and Cyran shrieked as another clipped her shoulder, evident by a blossom of blood spattering the mud at her feet. Farr yelped in surprise and raised his blaster, but his frantic shot went wide and whizzed past Nuri's face, close enough to raise blisters along her cheek and jaw. Tama shouted incoherently as she tackled the Zabrak from behind, nearly taking another bolt from Farr straight to the forehead, and instead feeling it slip millimeters past her _tchun_. She and Nuri hit the mud and rolled in a tangled heap, struggling over the blaster rifle, while Fenn continued to scream and Cyran whimpered. Tama rolled Nuri over and saw a pure grimace of uncontrollable fear on her face, though her eyes were locked on something distant, something only she could see.

Tama shoved the blaster rifle against the Zabrak's chest and slapped her across the face, hard enough to stun her. It was the most she could do in that instant, for she could feel the Force writhing around the unfortunate girl, somehow affecting her mind with abject fear and bewilderment. Nuri was babbling complete gibberish, which ceased suddenly when Tama struck her, and she began to come to again, her eyes refocusing and her death grip on her blaster relaxing. Tama leaned over her, locked gazes, and shouted, "Nuri! Whatever you're seeing, it's not real! Snap out of it!"

Nuri's gaze shifted, then met Tama's own, lingering bewilderment and horror drawing tears from her eyes. "Tama? Wha—?"

Whatever more she wanted to say, Fenn shrieked again, a scream so tortured and unnatural it was painful to hear. Everyone's regards were drawn to where the Bothan lay, only to see him drug across the ridge's mud, leaving a trail of indentations caused by his flailing limbs and bright smears of blood that reflected the phosphorescent light of the closest mushrooms. The way he moved, it appeared as though something was dragging him away into the deeper shadows, but nothing physical could be seen. Tama's eyes followed the invisible path suggested by the Bothan's flurried movements, and caught a glimpse of something vaguely humanoid lurking in the darkness beneath the fungal canopies. The insane whispers in her ears became a joyous clamor as the Dark Side was called upon by someone, or something, within a stone's throw of her, inevitably dragging Fenn from the group and into the shrouding darkness beneath the mushroom caps.

Tama hauled the nearly insensate Nuri to her feet and pushed her shoulders beneath her left armpit, supporting her as she turned away from the shape, from the dying Fenn's fearsome fate. "Run!" she screamed to the other children, most of whom had been shocked to a dead standstill. Her scream broke them from their reveries, from their locked gazes upon the ghastly fate about to befall the unfortunate Bothan boy. Ashla uncharacteristically sprang to her feet first, pulling Cyran up with her and supporting her as the two hobbled away from the presence of "the Savior". Farr still seemed determined to shoot Nuri dead, but his desire for personal survival overrode his desire for retaliation, and he accompanied Vibak-Ol in running past the hobbling pairs of girls to take the lead. Vo-Yees brought up the rear, aiming his blaster back into the forests' depths and firing randomly at the black shapes there which seemed to become amorphous shades of horror of their own volition. Fenn's cries became more frantic, and then devolved into a series of gasps, gurgles, and retching. The Dark Side warped and twisted further atop the ridge, and Tama hurried as quickly as she could, pulling the discombobulated Nuri along with her.

Farr gave a shout a few meters ahead, followed by a grunt and growl from Vibak-Ol, then a clattering of stone and broken fungi, as though many objects had been dislodged and were falling down a slope. Tama's curiosity as to the source of the noise was answered almost immediately, as her distracted focus caused her not to notice the ridge dropping away into a gradual but sudden slope deeper into the jungles. Both she and Nuri tumbled head over heels, their interlocked arms separating as they fell through mud and underbrush, before hitting more level ground, the impact softened by deep mud. Tama sprawled upon her belly, momentarily suffocated by the mud reaching up her nostrils and into her mouth. She pushed off the ground, her wrists sinking into the mire, spitting and sneezing the viscous dirt, water, and spores from her respiratory passages. Her right hand came up to smear the mud from her eyes, and her gaze found Nuri struggling to rise as well. Her face was contorted with a grimace of pain that went far beyond physical; she was horrified by what had occurred on the ridge. "I...I killed—Fenn...he's dead..."

Tama tossed her head back and forth, to see the other children picking themselves out of the mud, attempting to run as far and as fast as the treacherous ground would allow. From above them, carried by the shrill and indifferent wind, came a final, sobbing wail from Fenn. Tama pushed down the revulsion and fear she felt, seizing hold of Nuri's arm and hauling her back to her feet. "We run. We can't help him now."


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

The world passed in a frenzied blur of shadows and infrequent glows across a background of endless night, fraught with nightmares and fear. Rain lanced across their vision, like stars streaking through the infinite depths of space. Fungal stalks rose out of the mud all about them, hemming in their flight and limiting their options in the paths they might take to flee the monster pursuing them. The mud made echoing protestations of broken suction as their feet pulled themselves out of the viscous substance with great resistance. Whatever form of solid ground existed beneath the sludge was rising before them, making their struggle uphill nearly impossible, for their feet and hands tended to slip back down from where they had been placed as they scrambled and crawled in their assent. There was little direction to their rushed and tumultuous sprint through the jungles, though their panicked minds managed to remember to stick close to their fellows as they ran, lest they find themselves alone and wandering in the wilderness, waiting to be swooped down upon by the insane and twisted predator who had brought them to this planet of fear and despair, who continued to hunt them down in retribution for escaping his "justice".

Tama had fled to the front of the shifting group of remaining children, her attention affixed on the echoes of Foyi as a means of concentrating on something beyond her abject fear, horror, and grief, as well as the impressions she continued to have of the grotesque presence flitting in and out of the perimeters of her perceptions. She was no longer helping Nuri along, for the Zabrak seemed to have recovered from whatever mind-affecting Force power had been levered against her. She remained at the Twi'lek's side, clutching her rifle to her chest and a truly grim expression etched into her features, which could have been made of stone with how tightly they were clenched. Ashla and Cyran followed directly behind, the Duros girl muttering and giving small, wheezing gasps of pain at the insignificant but painful blaster burn on her shoulder. Vo-Yees huffed behind them, his thicker-set frame lending extra weight, and subsequently extra suction, to every footfall in the mud. Farr and Vibak-Ol did not stay in any particular place within the group, darting forward and back, occasionally stumbling, and sweeping their blasters at the darkness beyond, expecting creatures of fear, destruction, and senseless violence to leap out of every shadow. More than once, one of them would be spooked by something they believed they saw, only to pause a moment to take a shot or more, the blaster bolts momentarily casting a scarlet glow on the jungle for meters around. Tama wanted to tell them to stop wasting ammunition and giving away their position, but she had barely the breath to continue maintaining their breakneck pace, much less draw enough to reprimand them for their actions.

They crested the ridge of mud and rivulets of water, emerging into an elevated clearing that allowed them to look upon kilometers of forest, spreading out to the horizons, rising and falling in tangles of uncultivated growth under a clouded sky of darkest night. Had it not been for the frequent flashes of lightning above them and the many natural patterns of phosphorescenece, they would have been looking out into nearly complete darkness, unable to distinguish environmental features and terrain masses from the night's oppression of the light. Silhouetted against the momentary illumination of the frenetic bursts of lightning was an immense terrain feature looming before and above them, an outcropping of moss-garbed rock forming a precipice over deeper and wilder sections of the jungle beyond, rising multiple meters in the air in the suggestion of an arch, before becoming mostly level at its peak. Gracing the top of its peak was a small grove of large, bent mushrooms, and even from this distance and with poor visibility, Tama could see that there was something wrong with several of the fungi at the precipice's peak. They exuded faint hints of smoke and steam, and some of them appeared to have been recently collapsed or uprooted with extreme violence.

Tama's eyes were drawn to the cliff rising before them, but they saw little of its particular features, as her vision had unfocused entirely while her mind reached out into the Force. The echoes of her sister's presence were overpowering here; Foyi had been here recently. Indeed, it felt as though she had just left, and Tama cursed herself and the speed of her companions for so narrowly missing her.

Farr was suddenly by her side, his voice loud and practically manic as he hissed, "Why stop, wormhead?" He waved his blaster rifle at her for emphasis. "We need move more!"

Tama felt a shard of anger lance through her concentration, and her hand snaked out to grip Farr's ragged tunic before she could consciously stop it. "You call me 'wormhead' again, bantha breath, and I'll shove that blaster up your exhaust port." She pushed the Rodian away from her, wrinkling her nose at his unique and rancid body odor, then returned her attention to the cliff before them. "My...sister was here. _Just_ here. We can't be far from her."

Vibak-Ol came to her other side. "'Ere she go?" he growled in a voice that sounded like he was interrogating her rather than asking for clarification.

The other children began to gather around the Twi'lek as she closed her eyes a moment and concentrated. Thunder grumbled overhead again, and the wind's howls became more acute. Tama's eyes snapped open, and she shuddered as she reeled her consciousness in from the Force. Nuri, panting from exertion, placed a hand on the girl's shoulder, both to announce her presence and to draw Tama's attention to her. "What did you...see?"

"Something happened here," Tama replied with a quaver in her voice. "Around and atop that cliff. Something violent, I think. There's a scent of recent death, of despair, of failure. I can definitely feel my sister was here, but there were others as well, and I think they were all involved in some kind of conflict. The Force is particularly raw and in turmoil here."

Cyran asked a question through gritted teeth, which Nuri voiced in Basic. "Do you still feel your sister alive?"

Tama nodded. "I think so...I think she's scared of being found, and is trying to hide herself. But this close to where she was recently, and with our familial relations, I think I can still sense her."

"You 'think'?" Vo-Yees grunted skeptically.

Tama whirled on him. She had grown quite impatient with this constant doubt, despite the others' insistence on following her. "I've led us this far, haven't I?"

"Maybe led us to 'Savior' in first place," Farr suggested viciously. "Maybe Fenn, Ossa alive still if not out here. Maybe alive if Nuri not go crazy!"

Nuri, normally so ready to confront Farr's incessant aggression, merely looked away in shame. Tama wanted to offer her comfort, but she did not understand what had happened to the girl anymore than the others did. She suspected that their captor had used the Force upon her, causing her to hallucinate or feel an uncontrollable and primal fear, both of which were motivations for the wild spray of blasterfire she had unleashed. But Tama did not know for certain what had occurred; she could not erase the image of Fenn falling in the mud, multiple maws of smoke and blood opening on his chest. Of the Bothan screaming as he was inexorably pulled into the darkness by the Force. Nuri may not have dealt the killing blow to the unfortunate boy, but she had been instrumental in his death.

The Gran boy turned away from Nuri to face Farr. "Now not the time for this, yeah? Savior still being out there."

Cyran turned her regard to Tama and asked a question. Tama glanced to Nuri, who was still looking down at her hands, which limply clung to her blaster and shivered with suppressed emotion. "Is _he_ near? Can you still sense him?"

Tama opened her mouth to answer, but Farr spat more of his vitriol in an interjection. "Why you even ask her? Why we even follow?! She didn't sense Savior until right on top us! What good she?!"

To Tama's surprise, Vibak-Ol came to her defense with another snarl. "Yo dint either, greenie. Yo have eyes; we all does. Can't blame."

Farr was too angry to be intimidated again, and his response came as shriek. "I _too_ can blame! She said lead us to sister, get offworld, get away for good!" He was no longer jabbing with his overlong fingers, but emphasizing his verbal points with his blaster, pointing the weapon first at Vibak-Ol, then at Tama. "Now we lost, in dark, in rain, and two dead! Dead 'cause she said she do this, she lead us! She has no more idea where we are, where we going, and I no follow no more! I no want to be dead 'cause some crazy _schutta_ and all her vapebrained friends don't like hiding!"

Nuri emerged from her self-pity and despair with a flash of anger, stepping in front of Tama and facing down the nearly-incoherent Rodian. "Farr, you've flapped your snout enough! We've all had doubts about this decision, but we took it to vote, and we decided to do this _together_. If you bail on us now, how far you think you're going to get on your own? _He's_ out there, waiting for us to lag behind, to separate and pick us off one by one!"

"He don't have to!" Farr screamed. "You kill us all for him!"

"He...he did something to me!" Nuri shouted back, though her voice sounded more like a plea rather than an angry retort. "All I saw were shadows, monsters reaching for us, and I responded. I...I just couldn't see...I didn't see Fenn and Cyran...all I saw was _him_."

"You saw nothing!" Farr responded. "You've gone crazy! I won't stay here no longer if you have blaster; I don't wanna get shot in back!"

Nuri's features twisted back to rage. "If I'm going to shoot you Farr, it'll be in your _karking_ face!"

Farr's blaster came up to aim at her forehead at the same time the Zabrak shouldered her own rifle. The other children leapt several steps back, fearing that blasterfire would soon erupt between the two. Neither one seemed even remotely fearful that the other would fire; indeed, both expected the other to fire, and thus both Zabrak and Rodian had gained a fearlessness in the expectation of mutually assured destruction. Vibak-Ol and Vo-Yees similarly raised their blasters, but seemed uncertain of whom they should be aiming their weapons at. A moment where the very air itself seemed charged with the promise of violence passed before Tama jumped forward, reaching out with her hands and gripping the tops of both blasters, forcing them to point at the ground. She was seething with anger, and that anger gave her a strength, a presence through the Force that suppressed the feelings and emotions of those near, as both Nuri and Farr's gazes were drawn to her in rapt attention. " _That is enough._ We are not going to start killing each other, out of fear and spite. This is what that bastard wants. He wants us to turn on each other, to expose ourselves as the beings of darkness he already believes we are. He wants to feel _justified_ for stealing us from our homes, for starving us, for throwing us into a cage of monsters and droids and desperation. For killing us in the most horrible ways he can imagine. We _all_ have one enemy here, and he is out there, right now, lurking, waiting for us to split, to turn on each other so that he can kill us and feel like he is doing the galaxy a service in the process. You don't hear his voice, but even now he influences us, reaching out to the Force to twist our doubts into violent action, to pit us against each other." She met Farr's eyes, then Nuri's, and her voice softened. "We don't have to like each other. We don't have to trust each other. But we do _have_ to stick together, to fight, or else none of us will survive this place. I promised that I would get you all to my sister and offworld, but I need your help, too. I'm not giving up on either one of you, and I refuse to allow you to give up on each other." She turned to look back at the other children gathered. "That goes for everyone here. Will we stand together, or will we fall separately?"

There was a moment of silence between them all, when the only sounds came from the wind shuffling the boughs and canopies of the jungle, the trickling of water through the mud at their feet, the minute splashes of rain drops striking Felucia's surface. Tama's grip on the two rifles quivered, her overextended muscles compromising her ability to keep the weapons pointed at the ground, and not their respective owners. But neither Nuri nor Farr were fighting her. The Rodian was the first to step back, reluctantly propping the stock of his blaster in the mud at his feet and turning away, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he tried to make himself calm again. Nuri simply dropped hers and threw her arms around Tama, rocking the girl back and nearly knocking her on her posterior. The Zabrak buried her face in Tama's shoulder and whispered hoarsely, "I'm sorry."

Tama returned the embrace, giving her a comforting pat on the back. "I know."

Vibak-Ol met Tama's gaze over Nuri's quivering form, the Gormak boy's face characteristically fierce. "We probly die. But I with yo."

Vo-Yees blew out a snorting sigh. "I'm not being happy alone in jungle. We stick together, yeah? Getting offworld, getting back home."

Ashla said nothing, but she gave Tama a nod, reaffirming the confidence she had placed in her before they had departed to the jungles. Cyan, who continued to lean against the Togruta girl, simply gave a pained but courageous nod of her own. Nuri, who had extricated herself from her Twi'lek friend, rushed to the Duros, holding her up as she similarly embraced her. The Duros groaned as the sudden motion elicited pain from her shoulder, but she seemed accepting of the Zabrak's presence and gesture. Probably as close to forgiveness as was possible for their extreme circumstances.

Farr, who was still leaning on his rifle, gave a grunt, his dark, multifaceted eyes shifting in hue as his vision flicked from those of the group and the dangerous jungles beyond. "Look...we should be going. Not safe here."

Tama nodded, hefting her own E-5 and scanning the forests, though even with her natural low-light vision, she could barely make any features out in the darkness. She opened herself to the Force again, sensing the chaotic shifts between dark and light, the innumerable menageries of living beings in the immediate area. She felt the Dark Side surge in a chorus of chuckles and a growing, coppery tang resting on the back of her tongue, a taste that was all too familiar to her, and instinctively whirled toward the deeper parts of the forests, somewhere behind and to the left of them. It was a presence she knew too well, peering out at them from the shadows he cloaked himself in, though he could not completely conceal himself from the Zeizon Sha Initiate and her determination to be aware of his movements at all times. Even as she caught a whiff of his otherworldly scent through her enhanced perceptions, she could feel his presence moving through the forest, inexorably drawing closer to them, as a voorcat might stalk a durni in the underbrush back on Yanibar. "Farr's right," she whispered. "We need to keep moving, 'cause he's not stopping, and he's coming right this way."

Farr gave her another skeptical look. "You sure he's coming?"

"Do you think after what happened to Ossa and Fenn he's going to stop there? He wants us all dead."

Farr pinched his face in a grimace, but deigned not to argue. Vibak-Ol followed Tama's gaze, sniffing the chilly, spore-filled air. "'Ere he is? 'Ow far?"

"I don't know how far, but he's coming from that direction," Tama indicated with a pointing index finger.

"Then we head the opposite way," Nuri replied in a weary voice.

"Opposite, but a little more to the side," Tama amended. "My sister went that way, past the cliff and toward that high country on the horizon. If we skirt the base of the cliff and make a run for those hills, we might get there quickly enough to lose 'the Savior' in the darkness."

Cyran gently pushed Ashla away and stood on her own, cradling her wounded shoulder, a new direction giving her the determination and purpose to press on. The others were similarly ready to continue moving, though Tama could feel the apprehension and near exhaustion they all experienced, how tired they were with both running and fighting, how sick of this corrupted world they had all become. How many uncertainties they still held regarding their survivability and Tama's capabilities in the Force and in her leadership. And yet they followed her as she carefully picked her way down the ridge upon which they stood, deeper into the thick, entangling underbrush and sucking mud. They were not presented with many choices after all.

The group hustled underneath the dark canopies. Thunder and lightning dueled in the atmosphere above, gouts of rain splashing down like spilled blood from the resultant violence. They ducked beneath the multilayered canopies and the frequent cover they provided, creeping toward the precipice in short spurts of activity, sprinting across clearings in between careful treks over more treacherous terrain. Presently, they found themselves in the deep shadows cast by the cliff, looming above them and blotting out what little light effused by the tumultuous sky they could see peeking between individual spreads of fungi. The acrid stench of drifting smoke, guttering flames, and ozone assaulted their olfactory senses as they drew near, reaffirming Tama's assertions that a battle had occurred about the cliff shortly before the children had arrived. The echoes left by Foyi in the Force were strong here, and she could almost hear her sister letting loose a warcry in her ears as her connection to the Force gave her a limited view into the recent past. There were so many echoes here, the imprints of sentient presences as clear to her as her own sister's, for she felt at least two others who held spiritual signatures unique to those who could feel and draw upon the Force. She wondered what it all meant, if these other Force-users were allied with or against her sister, but her metaphysical assessment of the site only urged her onward. She glanced back momentarily, to make certain the other children continued to follow her unerringly through the path she took that circumvented the precipice's base.

Tama's foot caught on something solid, the impact eliciting a _ping_ of metal. She stopped to regain her equilibrium, then squatted down beside the heavily-armored carapace of a battle droid, only this one was massive, pieced together from matte black plating of phrik alloy, a heavy repeating blaster rifle embedded in the mud beside where it had fallen. Most of its limbs had been detached and crumpled by impact with the ground, suggesting it had fallen from a great height. Perhaps even the top of the cliff. Its head was fashioned in an exaggerated and fearsome version of the helmets worn by stormtroopers.

Nuri squatted beside her, poking at the lifeless machine of war with the barrel of her blaster. "What d'ya suppose this is?"

"Evidence that there _are_ Imperials on this planet," Tama replied glumly. "I think...I think this droid fell in battle with my sister."

Nuri whistled in wonder. "I don't recognize this model of droid, but if your sister was able to take this thing down, she's even more formidable than you've led us to believe."

"She didn't attain the rank of 'Warrior' through the Holonet," Tama replied sarcastically. "Though, I fear there may have been more..."

"If you still sense your sister somewhere out here, she's probably fine. Right?"

Tama concentrated a moment again, then responded with a grim nod. "Alive, as far as I can tell. But fine? Healthy? Unharmed? I couldn't say."

"All the more reason to keep moving," Nuri remarked authoritatively. She stood and turned in time to see both Vibak-Ol and Farr attempting to extract the heavy repeating blaster from its fixture in the mud. Had they been in good health and properly rested, either one of them would have been able to lever the unwieldy weapon from the mud, but between the two of them, they were barely capable of making it shift in the deep mud. "Guys, even if you get it out, what're you gonna do with it?"

"Turret," Vibak-Ol suggested between grunts of exertion.

"Turret requiring stationary position, yeah?" Vo-Yees scoffed. "I thought we're being gone, quick quick."

Not even Farr could argue with that logic, and the pair of boys gave up on acquiring the weapon. Even so, Vibak-Ol refused to give up, his eyes alighting on something that was lying perpendicular to the droid's right arm. With a frustrated growl, he extracted the length of grimy metal, a staff over a meter long, both ends capped by a cylindrical, transparisteel casing housing complex electronics and energy conductors. His clawed hands slid along the staff's grip until they thumbed an actuator, and both ends were suddenly wreathed in shrouds of sparking, snapping electricity, suffusing the immediate area with a lurid violet glow. Vibak-Ol swung the weapon through a couple passes, displaying the skill with melee weapons he apparently, that he had yet to reveal. With another flip of the actuator, he doused the electricity of the weapon, then undid his belt and made a carrying strap of it, which he attached to the staff and then used it to carry it across his back. Farr, whose eyes were larger than usual in jealousy, pointed at the staff on the Gormak's back. "What that?"

"Electrostaff," Vibak-Ol replied simply. "Mine," he added with a growl.

"'Nuff gawping. More moving, yeah?" Vo-Yees encouraged as he strode past the Rodian and Gormak.

Farr was obviously jealous of the new weapon the Gormak had acquired as he sullenly grumbled in Vibak-Ol's direction. "What you plan on doing with that?"

"Hit Savior" Vibak-Ol replied nonchalantly. "Real hard. Knock on ass, then beat an' buzz to dead."

Tama ignored the pair of them and pressed forward, continuing to follow the path described by her sister's presence, the wreckage of droids and carbon scoring of fungi further suggesting the small but vicious battle that had taken place about the precipice. But Tama was certain she would have felt Foyi's distress had she been gravely wounded or even killed, and the fact that she was still able to sense her sister's presence, even faintly, gave her hope that they would not be too late to find each other. Doubts hidden in the recesses of her mind reminded her of her own limitations in telepathy and the difficulty she experienced using the Force at all in the corrupted and dark morass of life essences on Felucia, but she ignored them, denying anything terrible befalling Foyi. _Foyi's fine. We'll find her, and she'll take us away from here._ That sequence of thoughts became a litany against the fear of loss, of failure, or overwhelming despair, words she repeated to herself in an effort to make herself believe them.

The procession hurriedly left the precipice behind, picking their way through the dark, dripping jungles, following Tama's vague hints at direction. The Twi'lek paused often the further they trekked, stopping to reorient herself and refocus her mental energies on the signature in the Force Foyi had left. It had been more difficult to concentrate over the last couple hours, but upon finding the precipice and the scene of the unknown conflict, she had redoubled her efforts to maintain her attempts to locate her sister. She wanted more than anything to be reunited with Foyi, to leave this world and never come back as long as she lived. The Force seemed to respond positively to that desire, for she found it not quite as arduous to reach out with her mind to glimpse the metaphysical nature of what awaited them ahead, the Dark Side receding from the perimeters of her consciousness and relatively leaving her alone for the time being. The presence of their kidnapper continued to flit in and out of the boundaries described by her expanded consciousness, as though he were simply reminding her that he was still out there, still following them. Waiting like a dragonsnake for the opportune moment to strike, to drag another of their number off to a terrible fate. Tama was determined to prevent anymore deaths at his bloodstained hands.

Despite Tama's lead, it was Nuri who spotted the physical signs of what was assumed to be Foyi's path, though the evidence discovered suggested Tama's sister had not been alone when she had passed through this way. There were multiple tracks imprinted in the mud, following a line of broken fungi trampled underfoot. Though Nuri had difficulty in distinguishing exactly how many people had carved a path through the jungles, but she was able to pick out three unique sets of prints that she was certain of. The Zabrak squatted beside the path, peering closely at a set of prints fading into the mud due to the intermittent rain that continued to fall. "One of these...is off, somehow. Like they were limping."

Vibak-Ol crouched beside her and sniffed deeply of the prints. "Bleeding. Hurt, this one."

Nuri looked up at Tama with a question in her dark eyes. "Was your sister traveling with mates? Other Zipper Shawls, perhaps?"

Tama ignored the play on the Zeison Sha's name and gave a shrug. "I don't know. The last time I saw my sister, I was being drug off by slavers, and she was trying to stop them. I highly doubt there were other Zeison Sha with her when she came this way, but I did sense more than one Force-user involved in that battle back there, just as I'm sensing...other presences along the path we follow. I don't think she was alone when she came this way."

"Keep some eyes out anyway, yeah?" Vo-Yees cautioned. "Maybe more Imps in the woods; won't listen before blasting, I'm thinking."

They continued with new speed and determination, following the path now as it meandered through the jungles, inexorably upward as they drew closer to the crags, ridges, and hills they had glimpsed in the distance when standing beside the cliff. There were stretches of jungle where the trail almost disappeared completely, the persistent fungi seemingly remaining undisturbed by sentient passage, the footprints obliterated by continuing precipitation. At these times, Tama would reach for the Force again, reorienting and directing their search by her brief flashes of insight and familiarity with her sister. Thus did she relocate the continuation of the path, allowing her to rest her supernatural powers, to simply exist and focus on the present, instead of actively drawing upon the Force for a dizzying insight into the recent past. Each time she drew on the Force again to reacquire her sense of her sister, she would reach just a little further, to attempt to relocate their captor, whom she was certain stalked them still. Her brow creased in worry when she realized she had not sensed his presence for well over an hour, or what she assumed to be an hour, as she had no exact recollection of time. She drew more from the endless possibilities of the Force, asking it to aid her in divining the location of her enemy, but his presence continued to elude her extrasensory regard.

The former captives struggled down a sudden slope, a slick of mud and gummy spores that descended into a narrow ravine, flanked by protruding rocks and fungal fronds. They clambered out of the ravine by helping each other over the rocks and fungi, then pushed through a tangle of bulbous stalks that would have been nearly impassable beforehand, had the individuals they were following not cleared many of them out, cutting most of them to manageable sizes and removing them from their foundations in the mud with some form of weapon that had melted and scorched the lacerated edges of the Felucian flora. Tama gave it a passing glance of curiosity, and continued to urge her companions forward, her earnest desire to reunite with Foyi growing exponentially as her sense of Foyi's closing proximity grew in her mind. They were not far behind the Zeison Sha Warrior now; she could feel every cell of her being vibrating with her conviction. The Twi'lek girl pushed aside the last of the fronds, parting them like a slimy curtain, to reveal a clearing beyond. She had to take a second look to realize she was not viewing a valley or patch of open earth in the forest, but rather a narrow thoroughfare that had been carved through the forests' interior, a scar left by artificial transportation, with no regard for the sanctity of Felucia's untamed and diseased nature. The road slashed through the jungle's heart showed signs of recent use, though stubborn colonies of mold continued to grow along its edges and in the deep, muddy grooves left by repulsors and multiple speedercraft that utilized it. The amount of erosion present in the passage suggested the road had been constructed long before any of the children had been brought to this planet, though the fact that the jungle had not reclaimed the strip of mud and strewn rocks that constituted the pathway denoted its continued use. But who was using it? Did this planet boast a larger population of sentients than they had been led to believe? Was this an Imperial road, one built by the Savior, or did it see use by other groups they had no knowledge of?

"Finally," Farr breathed, his breath coming in ragged, whistling gasps through his snout. "Civilization."

"Not likely," Vibak-Ol argued. "Imperals or Savior, dis belongs to. Better stays away, keep to trees and cover."

"It's no safer in the trees than it would be out here," Nuri objected, walking out into the open space described by the road with her A280 leading the way.

"Can't see us 'idden in trees."

"That son of a Hutt doesn't need to see us to find us," Nuri retorted wearily. Her countenance adopted a grimace as she undoubtedly recalled the gruesome fates of Ossa and Fenn. She looked back to Tama, who was walking along the road's edge, searching the ground for disturbed puddles and more bootprints. "Your sister came this way, right? Maybe she's following the road?"

Tama inspected the minor suggestion of tracks she discovered, then nodded her head slowly. She pointed along the road's length, where it sloped back from the hills they had yet to reach and made a left curve, disappearing behind towering piles of mushrooms. "I believe she and...whoever she's with went that way."

Cyran voiced something that sounded negative, even exasperated. Nuri grimaced again, translating. "That's the way we came from. The Savior's back that way."

Tama tried to keep a neutral expression in response to that, but the frown on her lips betrayed her uncertainty and prompted the Zabrak to step closer, that she might have a better view of her friend's eyes. "He is back that way...right?"

Tama bit her lip, her _tchin_ wrapping defensively about her throat. "I...I've lost...track of him. Awhile ago, now. I've been trying, but I can't sense where he is. I think he's trying to stay hidden, and if that's the case, I don't think I'll be able to sense him until he wants us to know where he is."

A chorus of gasps and curses greeted that announcement. Farr glanced nervously at the walls of foliage leering over the road, their strands and fronds like grasping fingers dripping with ichor, reaching down to pluck them from the road should they make the mistake of drawing too close to the shadows they cast. "What he doing last you...sensed him?"

"Following us. Waiting for us to slip up, likely."

"Or be springin' some kinda trap, no doubt," Vo-Yees offered pessimistically.

Tama could not argue with that, and said nothing in response. The Gran was most likely correct, but there was little that could be done. They would have to keep constant vigilance, like they had been this entire trek through the jungles, and hope that they would have enough time to react to any diabolical schemes or sadistic attacks the Savior might machinate against them. The entire situation made the skin of Tama's _lekku_ crawl, but she would not be dissuaded from following and finding Foyi, even if Foyi's trail led back from whence they came, back to "the Savior". If she was heading in the same direction they had last encountered that monster, it was likely she would run afoul of him, and if there was anything Tama could do to prevent him bringing any harm to her sister, or anyone else, she had to try. "Has anything really changed? My senses and the tracks say my sister went back this way, so that's where we go. Just keep an eye out for the bastard like before, and if we hurry, we should catch up with her. We're close now; I can feel it."

A rumble chased the tail end of her sentence, which she initially assumed was another burst of thunder, but a glance at the sky overhead revealed the storm finally beginning to abate, and the sky lightening. The rumble continued and grew in volume, and Tama realized it was a steady sound of some sort of vehicle approaching rapidly. She began to back away from the road and toward the cover offered by the jungles as the other children similarly retreated to the shadows, though Tama's steps were slowed by the hope that the unseen and approaching vessel would be transporting her sister, and the reunion she longed for was mere moments away.

But her hopes were dashed to ruin when a large, unwieldy speeder truck swung a wide turn around the curve down the slope and ahead, a rusted and scarred ST-101 Repulsortruck that barely seemed to hover above the mud as it sped ponderously toward her. The vehicle was laden with heavy equipment and many skeletal forms clinging to the open sides of the vessel, their angular heads swiveling to face her at the same time their blasters rose to their shoulders. Tama gave a squeak of fear as she dove for the forests' edge, and blasterfire erupted around her, piercing the air with high-pitched shrieks and lurid crimson glows. The noise was even more deafening than the ferocious thunder had been, accompanied by the screams of the other children, the almost excited growls of Vibak-Ol as he reached out from his place of cover and seized a hold of her filthy tunic, ripping her down as a fusillade of laserfire knifed through the air in which she had stood. She found herself rolling through mud and moss, barely keeping hold of her blaster as she slammed against the hoary bole of a gargantuan mushroom. Tama breathlessly pressed herself against the fungus, her eyes briefly meeting the red and yellow orbs of Vibak-Ol. Had Tama not been able to feel his exhilaration through the Force, she would have mistaken the grin on his alien face for an enraged snarl. He had been waiting for the opportunity to fight, to retaliate against the creature who had imprisoned him; he had been waiting for vengeance, and his vengeance had been delivered into his lap with the arrival of their captor's minions.

Tama opened her mouth to say something, but the Gormak boy was already sprinting out of cover, his puny holdout blaster in one hand, his procured electrostaff in the other. Crimson blasts of light sped toward and around him, but he charged headlong regardless, giving a wordless cry of pain, rage, and bloodlust. Tama craned her neck to peer around the mushroom's stalk, and watched in perverse wonder and abject horror to see those hyphens of bright energy slash the air all around him, though none hit him as he charged the starboard side of the repulsortruck. One of the B1 Battle Droids aimed its weapon down at the suicidal youth, but Vibak-Ol's electrostaff swung upward beneath the droid's angular chin and took its head off with the resultant arc of electricity. His other hand jabbed forward, the holdout blaster spitting miniscule bolts of energy, but at such close range, they packed enough of a punch to melt another battle droid's sternum to glowing slag. Fully immersed in the heat of battle and the adrenaline rush that came with the determination to fight with nothing left to lose, Vibak-Ol's movements kept him dancing back and forth, avoiding the flailing arms of battle droids and the wild potshots they aimed down at him. First one hand stabbed forwad, and a battle droid took enough of a shock to send it flipping over the portside of the vessel. The second hand jabbed, his holdout blaster spat, and another battle droid collapsed to the open floor of the vehicle, smoldering from a quartet of wounds in its carapace.

Tama willed herself to react, to bring the blaster she fumbled about with in her hands to bear, but even as Vibak-Ol's savagery got underway, it was ended suddenly and brutally. For not all the droids upon the speeder truck were malfunctioning and idiotic battle droids, as a B2 in better fighting shape clambered over the side of the repulsortruck and advanced on the Gormak. Vibak-Ol fired a multitude of shots into the automaton's thick armor, but the duranium held. He swung his electrostaff in a wide, devastating arc, but was too slow for the Super Battle Droid's mechanized reflexes. The droid caught the haft of the weapon, halting the electrified end centimeters from its chest, and brought its other arm up, its weaponized wrist directly before Vibak-Ol's face. There was a scream of energy as a trio of bolts erupted from the Super Battle Droid's wrist simultaneously, and the Gormak's head disintegrated into a wash of blood and brain matter, and all the tension and fight went out of his body at once, which limply dropped to the mud beside the speeder.

Tama heard a shriek of denial within a meter from her, and turned to see Nuri crouched within a tangle of fungal fronds. She braced her blaster rifle against her shoulder and unleashed an onslaught of lasers, riddling the Super Battle Droid with a multitude of glowing holes, then shifting her aim to the cockpit of the repulsortruck itself. Tama snapped out of her shock and horror to marginally aim her E-5 Blaster Rifle, and joined the Zabrak in concerted fire upon the repulsortruck's cockpit, while the other children unleashed their own blasts at the speeder's flanks. Battle droids attempting to draw beads on their unseen foes beneath the mushrooms fired wild, straying shots that did little more than knife through the thick, spongy flesh of Felucian fungus. The children's shots were more devastating, bisecting limbs and furrowing through droid carapaces, sending limbs and slagged circuitry spewing from the repulsortruck's open interior. The speeder gave a throaty groan as blaster bolts dug deep into its rusted, moldy plating; the vehicle had little in the way of armor, and it soon dropped from the meter above the ground where it rested, its repulsors overheating when one of Cyran's blaster bolts impacted the underside of the vessel. By that point, what few battle droids had not been damaged beyond repair or completely destroyed tumbled from the interior of the vehicle, often giving off wails and whines regarding the misfortunes of machines programmed for wanton violence and destruction, and continued to possess a desire for preservation of their functions.

Nuri stood from her crouch and the cover the fronds provided and fired a single bolt, sending the oblong head of the final B1 spinning off into the forest. The decapitated body collapsed atop the pile of wreckage that had once been several droids and the smoldering ruin of the ponderous and awkward speeder truck, its rusted sides now blackened by carbon scoring and fire, accompanied by the glowing edges of bolts that had punctured its decrepit hull plating. Her gaze was as fierce as it was distraught as it fell upon the corpse that had been Vibak-Ol. " _Stoopa_ bastard. The hell was he thinking?"

Tama similarly emerged from cover, feeling shaken and uncertain of her steps as she returned to the road and knelt beside the Gormak's body. She made herself not look at the smear of ichor and fragments of skull that had been Vibak-Ol's head, then reached down and retrieved the holdout blaster he had carried, hefting the electrostaff after. She thumbed its actuator to determine if it still functioned properly, then slung it over her back. She discarded the E-5 she had been using, flexing her hands as the uncomfortable levels of heat produced by the weapon had chafed her palms raw; judging by the feeling of some of the grimy skin there, she believed the blaster had given her minor burns. She reached down and procured a more suitable weapon from the locked manipulators of a B1 Battle Droid, a DH-17 Carbine. She tested the heft of the weapon in her hands as the other children joined her in rummaging for more weapons and power packs for their current blasters, casting furtive glances at the body of their former companion. Vo-Yees seemed particularly despondent as he squatted beside the Gormak's corpse, his trio of eyes blinking rapidly, a strangled grunt emerging from the back of his throat that might have been the Gran's version of a sob. Ashla, who rarely changed the detached and dejected expression of her face, almost seemed relieved.

Cyran made a lengthy remark, speaking directly to Nuri. The Zabrak absentmindedly translated for everyone present as she slapped a fresh power pack into her A280 and slung the weapon across her back. "Cyran thinks this might have been a trap laid by 'the Savior'. He's been following us this whole time, herding us toward this path, where his droids could shuttle in and capture us."

Tama glanced down at Vibak-Ol's remains. "They have a strange definition of 'capture'."

Nuri gestured at her head. "They're Battle Droids. They're barely capable of shooting straight, much less interpret orders correctly. For all we know, that Hutt-licker told 'em to kill us all right here and now. He's gotta be as sick of running through this infernal jungle as we are."

Any further discussion was halted by the sound of thunder once more, but it was not the enraged arguments of the cumulonimbit above that produced the cacophony. The children whirled to look back along the direction of the path from whence the first speeder truck had emerged, and around the curve of the road, seemingly materializing from the jungle itself, came no less than three similar speeder trucks, all laden with various kinds of battle droids, a menagerie of machines in different levels of functionality, but all capable of killing the children upon the road and now out in the open. Tama opened her mouth in a wordless scream of warning as blaster bolts erupted from the approaching vehicles, filling the intervening space with so much laserfire, it was as if the atmosphere itself had been set aflame. The children ducked and ran the opposite direction, unable to withstand an onslaught of such magnitude, especially caught in the open as they were. Tama began to scurry for the mushrooms lining the road, but her danger sense suddenly tugged upon her consciousness, and she caught a flash of insight, of the insane, sadistic presence that she had come to recognize as that of "the Savior". She waved her arm to catch the attention of her compatriots, screaming as loud as she could over the shrieks of laserfire overhead. "Don't go into the forest! Not yet! He's here again!"

Tama took off running down the road as it sloped upward, meandering its way toward the hills, crags, and ridged high lands in the distance, barely perceptible as vast silhouettes of varying heights on a horizon obscured by haze and mist. "Head for the hills! We'll try to lose them all there!"

The Twi'lek did not know if all of the children heard her directions, but she guided them nonetheless by sprinting along the road's edge, keeping her movements erratic so as to foil the droids' attempts to draw a bead on her back, their aim feeling like hot vibroknives pricking her spine. Blaster bolts whizzed past them, a few close enough to force her to duck, another whizzing past millimeters from her left side, immediately evaporating sweat and mud from her clothing. Tama ignored the close call, focusing on the Force, on the dark presence pacing them from the depths of the forest, on the children following her lead. The rumble of the landspeeders was inexorably drawing closer, and now she could hear the unnecessary vociferations of the battle droids, their nonsensical banter as they continued to pour hyphens of lethal energy into the air all around them, spattering the mud of the road, blowing chunks from the stalks of mushrooms along their sides, and burning the air just above their heads.

Tama focused on the Force, allowing it to guide her steps as she sprinted forward, her feet shifting to keep her always in motion, always unpredictable. And all the while, she prayed, to whomever might be listening, that she might survive this, that those with her might survive. That she would see the face of her sister again before she left this world, one way or another.


	31. Chapter 31

Chapter 31

The descent from the precipice's heights was slow and arduous. Vaevi refused to be carried or supported for long as they proceeded downward, but her obstinate insistence upon climbing by herself had to surrender to the nature of her injuries at multiple points. Both Foyi and Rayf did their best to assist her in the endeavor downward, with Foyi even calling upon her telekinetic skills to seize hold of the Iktotchi and lower her the rest of the way to the ground. Her own exhaustion and pain made it difficult for her to concentrate, and so Vaevi's midair descent was not as smooth as she intended. The Iktotchi uttered several vile curses, both verbally and telepathically, as her dangling feet struck the edge of one of the large mushrooms, followed by a cry as those feet finally met the ground and refused to support her initially. Both Foyi and Rayf scrambled the rest of the way down the treacherous slope as quickly as they were able, to find the bounty hunter picking herself up from where she had sprawled across a mound of mold, mud, and shards of rock, the last vestiges of a landslide fallen from the upper reaches of the precipice they had just left. Foyi rushed to her side and helped her to her feet, the Iktotchi swaying and continuing to curse liberally and colorfully. "Sorry," Foyi interjected sheepishly. "I tried to set you down...gentler than that."

Vaevi grunted and inhaled hesitantly, setting the foot attached to her wounded thigh gingerly upon the ground. She tested it a couple times, hissing in pain as she did, then pulled away from Foyi's support. She hobbled forward a few steps, testing her weight and her leg, and maintaining an upright position. "It's _karking_ fine," she grumbled. "Hutt-sucking, _stoopa_ , pieceaslag, nerfherdin' Imperial womp rats..."

Rayf walked past the two women, his eyes scanning the darkness in search of threats. "I can't say I'm overly fond of the Imps myself, Vaevi, but if you insist on carrying on like that, we're going to alert every Imperial womp rat for ten klicks."

"Why don't I shoot _you_ in your shoulder and leg and see how well you handle it?"

Foyi peered at the bacta patches over her wounds, though she could see no indication that the injuries were faring any worse than they had moments before. "Is the bacta not working?"

"Of course it's working!" Vaevi snapped. "But it still hurts like a fever wasp sting..."

"At least you can still walk," Rayf supplied positively. "And talk well enough to curse and threaten; you'll be fine."

"Don't patronize me, Corellian," Vaevi responded acidly as she hobbled past him. She had gone a few meters deeper into the jungle before she looked back over her shoulder, her expression, barely perceptible in the darkness and continuing rain, etched in genuine surprise. "What are you two standing around for? We've got places to be, serial killers to vape. Let's move!"

Foyi gave her human companion a wry smile. "Where is she actually going?"

Rayf shrugged. "That's what I'm trying to figure out. Did she hit her head when you dropped her?"

Apparently, Vaevi's hearing was exceptional, for she whirled around as quickly as her wounded form and hobbled gait would allow. "I'm heading back toward the speeder trail we were following earlier. The two of you can keep doubting my mental capacity, or you can come along and find out if it does actually lead to Arc—the Shepherd."

Foyi's _lekku_ twitched as exhilaration rose from the fathoms of her being and sent every nerve within her buzzing. She raced across the uneven ground and thick slurry of mud, no longer noticing the pain from multiple injuries, new and old, arching through her body or the rain falling upon her skin, her sodden clothes clinging to her frame and making almost every movement uncomfortable. She slid beside the bounty hunter and excitedly gripped her shoulders, eliciting a gasp of pain from the Iktotchi. "The trail?! Where?"

Vaevi pried the Twi'lek's hands off her shoulders with a huff, rubbing the patched wound upon her injured appendage. "If my sense of direction hasn't been completely fouled by this murglin' rain and that climb down the cliff, it should be a couple klicks this direction I was trying to walk toward. North, I think." She checked the chronometer on her wrist, then nodded. "Yeah. North of here, about two or three klicks."

Rayf also joined the two women, his countenance bemused. "Your visions have become incredibly specific."

"Visions have nothing to do with it. When the two of you were conducting your séance or whatever it is you were doing, I was keeping watch and scouting from the top of the cliff. Through the scope of my rifle, I was able to spot a break in the forests' canopy, a line of mud and stone that was relatively straight and too consistent in its contours to be a river. I'm certain it's the trail we were following; we haven't strayed too far from the valley with that ridiculous sarlacc." She gritted her teeth and shifted her weight wholly upon her uninjured leg. "I could be wrong, but I say it's worth checking out."

Rayf nodded his assent. "We've nothing else to go on."

"Let's go," Foyi replied enthusiastically.

The three of them proceeded between the encroaching moss, fronds of mildew, and towering mushrooms, walking through a morass of darkness, rain, mud, and differing patches of phosphorescence competing for greater luminosity. Vaevi's steps grew more certain as she walked, the bacta in the patches and ampule she had injected working their magic on her injured and weary flesh, her determination and desire for answers, for vengeance, providing all the motivation she needed to continue striding forward. Foyi and Rayf followed her as she led the way to where she believed the Shepherd's trail continued its way through Felucia's jungles, keeping close beside her in case she would stumble or her determination failed to keep her upright. Foyi did little more than follow; her mind was too active, too convoluted with a hopelessly tangled snarl of thoughts and emotions. She found comfort in the fact that Tama was somewhere on this world, that they had made contact with each other, however brief. And yet she could not deny the continued pounding of her heart, her physiological and emotional response to the fierce battle they had just fought atop the cliff. The realization that she had almost died more times than she could count in mere moments had given her a sense of urgency, a revelation in how fragile she truly was, even with the power of the Force within reach. She had faced death multiple times within such a short period of time, but the cessation of her own existence no longer scared her. She looked down at her cut, bruised, and grimy hands, and found they were still quivering with exertion, with all the adrenaline that had fueled her frame during the pitched battle. With lingering fear. Fear born of the distinct possibility that she might still fail, in spite of all the adversity she had already overcome. She might fall in battle or arrive too late, and Tama may forever be left to the cruelty of this planet and the monsters that walked its surface. She might finally succumb to the Dark Side, which had already so stained her soul, and constantly nagged her every moment she walked in the metaphysically polluted jungles surrounding her.

Her hand reached absentmindedly for the holster on her back, and only belatedly she remembered the weapon of the Zeison Sha, the symbol and companion of one trained in the arts of the ancient Force tradition, had been destroyed. The discblade she had crafted herself through both trial and error and the whispered wisdom of the other Warriors of Yanibar, related to her in hushed tones within cantinas and hidden alleys. Though her entire identity did not rely upon that training or the weapon she had carried and used almost exclusively for so long, she could not deny the pit in her very essence that the loss of the discblade had left in her. Her mind struggled to move past these gloomy thoughts. Adhering to the Zeison Sha tenets had never been about wearing specialized armor or throwing a hoop of sharp blades she had created for herself. She, and the Zeison Sha, would be nothing without the connection to the Great Mystery, the power granted them by the Force. The Force had not forsaken her, and so she remained whole, no matter how she felt regarding the loss of such an integral part of her arsenal.

And then Foyi's thoughts turned to the frightening visage of the Inquisitor, the Devaronian woman Rayf had referred to as Vinaq. The woman he had recognized and known from a previous life; a previous life that had a different name from the one he used. Not for the first times, doubts grew heavy upon her consciousness when she considered the human man walking beside her, doubts regarding his identity, rather than his convictions, his determination to see her reunited with Tama, to see the abused and victimized children at the mercy of the Shepherd returned to their homes. But the conversation he had carried on with the Imperial Inquisitor had raised more questions regarding this person who called himself Rayf Moors, who fought like a Matukai and yet wore Vinaq's lightsaber on his belt. Who was he really? Foyi turned her eyes forward from the sidelong glance she was favoring Rayf with, concentrating on the jungle and the Iktotchi woman before her. Did it really matter? His past was his own; she had been a part of his life for little more than a few days, even if it felt far longer than that. She had no right to interrogate him so.

Foyi felt Rayf's presence expanding, his consciousness tentatively reaching out toward her own. She glanced at him, to find him staring directly at her, no longer focusing upon where he placed his feet on the treacherous ground. A rakish smirk creased his lips, and his brow rose. Foyi furrowed her own. "What are you smirking at?"

"What are you looking at?" he countered. Before she could deny anything, he held up a forestalling finger. "You were looking at me; perhaps my overwhelming charms have finally melted that ice planet exterior of yours."

Foyi snorted rudely. "Hardly, flyboy." She continued walking in silence, meaning for that comment to end their potential conversation, but she could feel Rayf's continuing regard. She could almost sense the smirk he kept plastered to his face as a physical object in the Force, which inevitably drug her gaze back to his stare. His regard had not shifted from her at all. Even so, he maintained his balance and unerringly placed his feet so that he would not trip or catch them upon mold or in deep depressions of mud.

Foyi sighed in defeat and looked forward again. "I've just got...alot on my mind. It was pretty tense back there for awhile, and I don't think I'm...fully functional yet. Or rather, my mind isn't."

Rayf nodded sagely, finally facing the direction in which they walked, his smirk giving way to an expression that was more troubled. "I think I know what you mean. Our previous encounter was...unexpected. Unsettling." He turned to her again, worry etched in his face. "I never asked you if you're okay. I mean, you're still walking, so physically you're fine, but...well, Vin—that Inquisitor almost killed you. That's not something you walk away from feeling stellar about."

Foyi's _lekku_ unconsciously wrapped protectively about her throat, as if trying to defend her from the memory of the lightsaber's heat hovering before her larynx. Before her face. She suppressed a shudder. "Well, someone trying to decapitate me with a lightsaber is a first. It'll take me awhile to finish processing that," she replied flippantly.

Rayf subconsciously glanced at the aforementioned lightsaber dangling from his belt. "Hopefully you won't have to try and process it again. You don't see a lot of these things in the galaxy anymore, thanks to Palpatine."

Foyi's regard was drawn to the weapon. "Is that why you took it? It reminds you of the Jedi?"

Rayf pointedly did not meet her eyes. "In some ways, I suppose you could say that. It reminds me of a time that felt...simpler. Structured. When I knew my place in the galaxy, and the galaxy seemed smaller and safer. I was going to be a Jedi Knight, a defender of peace and justice in the galaxy, an agent of the Republic's continuing mission of unity and tranquility." He favored her with a self-deprecatory smile. "I was more naïve. More idealistic. Less ravishingly handsome." He laughed when she rolled her eyes and continued. "Besides, it could be a handy tool and weapon. It seemed a shame to leave it behind. Maybe, outside of the hands of an Imperial Inquisitor, it can be used for some good."

Foyi bit her lip and looked away in contemplation. "You always speak so highly of the Jedi. And yet, isn't what that Inquisitor said is true? Didn't the Jedi throw you out of the Order because you didn't meet their standards?"

Rayf grunted at the choice of her words, and she could feel the irritation exuding in minor eddies from his presence, though whether he was annoyed at her words, the Jedi who had refused him training, or his own perceived failures could not be determined. "Ever since I was first made aware of my connection to the Force, all I wanted to be was a Jedi Knight. I trained long and hard, harder than some, and I knew practically everything a Jedi Initiate could know regarding the Order and the Force, committed to memory. But I had a weak and inconsistent connection; the Force was with me, but it wasn't strong, and calling upon it didn't come easily. That was the reason I failed the Initiate Trials. As for the reason I left...it was more complicated. I wasn't _thrown out_ of the Jedi Order, but the Council refused to continue training me to become a Jedi Knight. They offered to make use of my meager abilities and my conviction to serve what good there is in the galaxy and the Light Side of the Force in the Jedi Service Corps. But I felt that all my hopes and dreams, all my hard work, had been for nothing, and so I took the offer as an insult, a poor alternative offered me only out of pity for my unique and unfortunate situation. I left because I felt cheated and angry."

"Makes sense to me," Foyi responded. "I would've probably felt the same way."

Rayf sighed. "I'm not going to try and claim that how the Masters handled...unique cases such as mine was the right thing to do, and I'm not saying they weren't stuck in their ways, or thought their insights into the Force were more valid than those with less training and experience. In my opinion, they should have been willing to tailor the training regimens to each Jedi potential, to study and discover each student's different connection to and means by which they used the Force, and not try to make everyone fit into a specific viewpoint. But the Service Corps was an honorable organization, and they helped foster peace and tranquility in the galaxy in ways more subtle, but often more effective, than even the flashy lightsaber-wielding Knights. I could have done much of what my sad, idealistic young mind wanted to accomplish in the Service Corps had I the foresight to consider the options offered me and not let my pride close that course off to me. Granted, had it not been for my anger and disappointment, I probably would not have expanded my Force potential with Matukai training." He turned to face her again, his voice soft. "And I probably would have died in the Purge; as a Matukai, I barely escaped it anyway. I might not have been here...with you. To help you, your sister, and all the others who've suffered at the hands of this sithspawn."

Foyi laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. "And if I haven't expressed my appreciation for your help before, I will now. You have no direct connection to anyone involved in all this or anything that happens here, but you continue to give of yourself without expectation of return or reward. There would have been many times already that I would have failed...or died, but you've stuck by my side this entire journey, and kept me alive, kept me together. Even though I realize I'm not the easiest person to get along with."

Rayf shrugged her hand from his shoulder, but as her hand fell, he caught it in his own and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "You're alright, Foyim'buma."

Foyi chose not to remove her hand from his immediately, even though both their palms were slick with sweat, mud, blood, and other unidentifiable substances. She took strength from that contact, and a part of her did not want to be the first to let go, even though she forced herself to after a lengthy moment. When she finally did, she dropped her hand, but did not pull it back to herself at first, instead gesturing with it toward his utility belt. "Can I see that?"

Rayf did not need to ask for clarification; he unhooked the lightsaber from his belt and passed it hilt-first to her. Foyi took the weapon gingerly, letting her fingers feel the silvery and white contours of the ribbed handle, the concentric circles of metallic and exotic materials feeling smooth and deceptively light in her hands. The weapon showed a fine attention to design and detail, as though whoever had made it had done so with painstaking care and over a great period of time. Having such a tangible connection to the weapon, she could feel its unique signature in the Force, the way it exuded its own energy, almost as though the device had been bound and imbued with the Force during its construction. In this way, it was like the discblade she had lost. Likely, the Inquisitor had created it as her own personal weapon to be an extension of herself and her unique abilities, both physically and in the Force. She had a sudden urge to activate it, to see how it felt in her own hands, how it coincided with her own command of the Force. But Foyi thought better of it, and passed the weapon back to Rayf, who simply clipped it to his belt once more. "That Jedi-hunter," Foyi began carefully. "You called her Vinaq...and she called you Thame. You knew each other...from before all this? Before...'the Purge'?"

Rayf would not meet her eyes, his gaze locked upon memories of a past that seemed lightyears away from his present. "We were Jedi Initiates at the same time, put through most of the same training and meditative regimens. We were actually in the same...I guess 'class' is the right word. Katarn Clan. About twenty students, all selected and grouped into the clan best known for those who draw upon the Force for stealth, subterfuge, and camouflage." He gave her a sidelong, evaluative glance. "Had you been brought into the Jedi Order when you were young, you probably would've been sorted into the Katarn Clan. I've noticed you tend to move quickly and quietly almost everywhere you go, keeping your emotions guarded, your words carefully selected. You and Vinaq probably would have been the best of friends."

Foyi raised her brow as she glared at him. "Unlikely. It seems you fit in well with this...'Katarn Clan' too, considering you rarely answer a question without first trying to redirect it to another subject, or avoid the answer entirely."

Rayf chuckled lightly. "You've caught me, cousin. My proclivity for being obtuse and mysterious has served me well over these years in staying ahead of the Empire and its Inquisitors. It also helps keep women interested."

Foyi did not justify that last statement with a response, instead trying a different tactic of inquiry. "Is that why...Vinaq was part of the Katarn Clan? Does she have some ability to completely hide herself from the Force? I've never felt such a...void centered around a person before. It felt...wrong somehow, like she shouldn't be able to exist without the Force like that. Whenever I reached out to her to try and feel her, to sense her presence, I felt like I was trying to grab hold of a slimy granite slug that kept slipping out of my grasp."

Rayf shook his head. "You have to remember I haven't actually known Vinaq since we were children. She displayed prowess with stealth and dueling, certainly, but most of the power and capabilities she displayed in our battle today were ways of using the Force I've never seen before. But the way she could so completely disappear from the Force isn't one of her powers. Maybe you noticed the strange scale she wore around her neck? That's a skin nodule from a Taozin, a big slug from Va'art that had the ability to appear invisible in the Force; there were records of them in the Jedi Archives I saw when I was younger, but they were supposed to be extinct. I'd heard rumors that Imperial Inquisitors had methods of hiding themselves completely from the Force, which is why so many Force-sensitives have fallen to their blades."

Foyi shuddered at the thought of creatures that could naturally disappear from the Force. She relied as heavily on the Force as she did her sight, especially in combat, and she found herself less than eager to meet opponents with such abilities again. Though the concept of being able to completely block outside influences through the Force, to become effectively invisible, was an intriguing one. Perhaps she could learn such power, though she doubted she could ask a Taozin or an Inquisitor for tutelage on the technique. She turned to Rayf again. "And she called you Thame..."

"Is that a question?"

"Is Thame...Mirac your real name?" Foyi shot back.

"Is Foyim'buma yours?"

"Yes," she replied cantankerously.

Rayf met her eyes, then sighed heavily. "Does it really matter? 'Thame Mirac' is the name I was given at birth, but I haven't gone by it since I left the Jedi. I'm a different person from the kid who failed the Initiate Trials and set out to find my place in the galaxy. I've adopted many names and aliases over the years, but I'm Rayf Moors now. Maybe I'll be someone else years down the road, but I hope you can understand my hesitation with using a given name that was recorded in the Jedi Archives...the data that has undoubtedly been in the Empire's possession for all these years." He continued to hold her gaze, and Foyi felt a ripple of hesitation in his presence. "I hope that doesn't change anything between us. I didn't think the names I used to use was important now."

Foyi's _lekku_ curled away from her throat and draped themselves back over her shoulders in a subconscious gesture of placation. "It doesn't. When she called you by a name I wasn't familiar with, I only realized I don't seem to know all that much about you. About where you come from, where you've been. Naturally, I was curious."

He smirked. "Knowing you, you were more suspicious than curious."

Foyi turned away with a shrug. "I won't argue with that. Knowing an Imperial Inquisitor by name tends to rouse some suspicions."

Rayf conceded the point with another chuckle. "Yeah, I can see how that might look bad. In my defense, that was the first time I've seen Vinaq since we were younglings. I didn't know she had survived the Purge, much less swore allegiance to the Emperor."

"So why do you think she was here? She hasn't been hunting you all this time, has she?"

Rayf shook his head. "I'll admit, it's a barvey coincidence, but I think it's only that. She seemed genuinely surprised to see me here; more likely, her and that scary bunch of stormtroopers, or whatever they were, were probably looking for potential recruits amongst the Force-sensitive natives. The Imps and Felucians didn't seem too fond of each other back at that sarlacc pit. That's what the Inquisitors do, if you didn't already know. They hunt down people who are sensitive to the Force, whether they have learned to use it or not, and then they evaluate the threats they pose to the Empire, or if they can be turned into tools of Palpatine's will. Into weapons and pawns of the Dark Side."

"That's why she gave you her...offer."

Rayf shrugged. "She's not the first Inquisitor to give me a similar offer. Though I haven't run across one in years, and it wasn't long enough, believe me."

Foyi gave him another bemused stare. "Everything you know about Inquisitors, and you still tried to get her to help us."

"We could use all the help we can get, Foyi," Rayf explained nonchalantly. "I swear, everything on this planet is trying to kill us _specifically_ , not to mention how every living thing here seems to be steeped in the Dark Side. It's probably only by the Force's providence alone that we've made it this far, and I had hoped to appeal to Vinaq's sense of justice to try and gain her aid, even if we could never trust her. And by helping the kids trapped somewhere in this hellhole, maybe she could've reconnected with some part of her she's lost since becoming a servant of evil. Everyone deserves a second chance, Foyi, and in these dark times, it's up to us to at least offer it to those willing to listen, to learn, and to contemplate changing their ways."

Foyi mulled over his words as they continued to walk. For the first time in many moments, she returned her attention to the stubborn bounty hunter hobbling before them, either concentrating on picking a path through the jungle that would not require much effort to bypass, or even lost in her own thoughts. Foyi tentatively exuded tendrils of consciousness toward the Iktotchi to get a sense of her mood, and felt ripples of decreasing pain accompanied by waves of growing weariness surrounding an interior current of distraught memories all splashing against a pit of anger without depth. Undoubtedly, the woman was thinking about the quarry they sought, the creature she was convinced had once been her husband and the father of her lost children. She craved confirmation of her suspicions, the contingency upon which the thoughts of vengeance she cradled like an infant relied upon. She wanted her suspicions to be true while simultaneously wished they were false. Vaevi held no more love for the man she had once been married to, but some small part of her still did not want all the heinous acts and rumors regarding the Shepherd's activities to be the responsibility of Arctan. That tiny, irrationally hopeful part of her still pined for a life she had not lived in decades, for a family she had cherished. Foyi could not help but feel sympathy for the woman, and considered what she might say in an attempt to alleviate the deep emotional scars that Vaevi had carried with her for so long. But she could sense they were buried too deep for Foyi's words to make any real impact.

Vaevi stopped suddenly before a thick wall of fungal stalks and fronds, a portion of the jungle that had become so twisted and grown together, they could not possibly slip through what few spaces were presented them. Rain ran freely down the slimy contours of the foliage, making the barricade appear to be a multicolored waterfall in the middle of the jungle. Foyi and Rayf joined her in standing before it, looking back and forth to see that it continued onward as far as they could see. Vaevi uttered a breathless curse, then turned to the Twi'lek and human. "Sithspit. Rayf, you still got that Pulse Rifle of yours? Maybe we can cut our way through the weakened sections here...or maybe your quaint spear could do some work on it."

Rayf did not answer her; he reached for his belt and came away with the stolen lightsaber in hand. He flipped the hilt around so that the emitter rose above his close fist. "Let's try this instead. And hope I remember how to use it." He gave both women a sardonic grin. "You might wanna stand back."

Vaevi slowly backed away, but Foyi resolutely remained where she was. If Rayf could display such skill with a weapon as exotic and unwieldy as a wan-shen, she had confidence in his abilities with a meter-long blade, even if it was made of pure energy. Rayf's grin widened at her impatient stance, then flipped the activation stud. The scarlet beam sprang to life with a _snap-hiss_ , and Foyi jumped a little as the sight of the weapon triggered memories of her recent brush with death at the end of that blade. Rayf whirled the lighsaber around him to get a feel for it again, his grin going practically manic with exhilaration, the blade moaning eerily through the humid air, drops of rain sparking as they impacted its sanguine length. Rayf began to carve into the barrier of fungi with wide, sweeping arcs, cutting away multiple plants with an ease that spoke of the power of the blade. The foliage offered no resistance as the lightsaber slashed through trunks almost half a meter thick, fungi falling around them, severed from their foundations, sending vibrations through the ground as they impacted and echoing noise through the depths of the jungle around them. Within seconds, a hole in the natural barrier had been opened, the cauterized stumps of fungi glowing slightly with rapidly-cooling heat. Rayf flipped the lightsaber around his wrist once more in sheer thrill, then deactivated and replaced it on his belt in a single fluid motion. He gave Foyi a surprisingly boyish grin. "Yep. Still got it."

"Yeah yeah, you're impressive," Vaevi grumbled as Foyi allowed herself a light chortle. She stumbled forward, then carefully stepped high over ragged stumps and to the other side of the barrier. "Now, if you two are done with all the bumblefluff, we have people to save."

The Iktotchi's admonishment put a somber damper on the companions' mood, and the trio said little as they continued pressing through the jungle. They met other similar obstacles on a few more occasions, and Rayf was only too happy to use the lightsaber again to clear their way. At one point, both Foyi and Rayf had to help Vaevi over the sliced stumps of a tangle of mushrooms, for though the bacta had already done wonders on her wounds, the strain of constantly moving in her injured state was slowing her down. She assured them when asked that the road she had seen from the cliff face could not be far, and if that was the case, Foyi suggested they should probably rest once they found it, if only for a few minutes. Vaevi looked like she wanted to argue, though she knew she would not be of much use to them, herself, or the people they wished to rescue if she did not allow her body some measure of time to recover.

They found the Shepherd's path not long after that, when the storm's fury was finally beginning to abate, though it still cast angry sheets of rain infrequently across the surface of Felucia, accompanied by skittering flashes of lightning and an incessant grumbling of thunder. Foyi found it difficult to breathe as she looked upon the stretch of mud and mold colonies bisecting the jungle, as though it were a physical tether binding herself to the presence of Tama on this world. She looked to the left, and saw the road trudging onward, disappearing as it ascended the undulating slopes and crags of high country leading to dark hills she could only just perceive through the haze of misting rain. To the right, the speeder tracks descended into a trail of mud and growing puddles, before weaving away into a curve that disappeared beyond more foliage. Vaevi let herself fall to her posterior and gasped heavily in a noisy sequence of inhalations and exhalations. "I told you," she uttered obstinately, though her voice betrayed the excitement rippling outward from her presence.

Rayf patted her on the shoulder, to which she responded with a slap to his wrist. "So which way do we go? Right or left? Down or up?"

Foyi stepped onto the path, ignoring the mud attempting to suction her feet into the morass. "If I have my bearings right again, I believe we came from those hills to the left. Those are probably some of the same cliffs that ringed that valley with the sarlacc." She turned to the bounty hunter. "Right?"

Vaevi shrugged. "I think so. I don't know for sure, but that's what my sense of direction's telling me too."

"Which means," Foyi continued after a nod, turning to the right and looking down the road's length, "we were following that way. Whatever that leads to over there, we haven't seen yet. Hopefully, the prison or fortress 'the Shepherd' keeps all the kids he kidnaps."

"We could try meditating again," Rayf suggested. "Maybe we can contact Tama...we barely reached her last time, but I could feel she recognized you."

Foyi shook her head. "It's enough that the both of us know the other is alive. If it comes to that, then we can try that again, but I'd rather not risk giving away our position to any nearby Felucians, or an Inquisitor none of us can sense coming."

Rayf scratched his goatee. "Good point. Then we'll let our other senses and this road lead the way. And pray your sister's on the other end."

"When I found her, her presence seemed to be coming from somewhere in that direction. She gave me images of a ledge, a cliff, and a campfire to go on, so if we see any rock formations like that, don't anyone keep it to yourselves."

Rayf's insufferable grin displayed itself upon his face once more. "You know me. I can't keep anything to myself."

"Except being friends with an Inquisitor," Vaevi quipped.

"Well, if we were friends before, I doubt we are anymore. I took her lightsaber, after all. And let Foyi throw her off a cliff."

"We should've killed her," Vaevi lamented sourly.

"What can she do? She's alone and wounded in the jungle, without her weapon and the support of her troops."

The Iktotchi bounty hunter gestured sharply at her right horn. "She can vape things with her _mind_."

Rayf seemed to consider that for a moment. "Yeah, that does give me alotta bad feelings. Let's keep an eye out for her, just in case."

Vaevi grumbled something unintelligible. A sudden burst of rain fell upon them, making pattering noises as the drops splashed across their skin and increased the volumes of the fetid, murky pools slowly growing within depressions in the muddy pathway. The bounty hunter exhaled loudly as she levered herself back to her feet. Foyi reached to support her, but Vaevi merely slapped her hand away and stood on her own, absentmindedly rubbing her wounded leg, careful not to dislodge the bacta patch. Rayf gave her a grimace, followed by a query. "Are you certain you should be moving yet? We can wait here a little longer, let yo—let us all gather our strength."

"The more time we waste, the more lives we could be wasting as well," Vaevi replied sharply. Rayf seemed taken aback, and she grimaced and continued in a softer tone. "I'm tired of waiting and searching. I'm _this_ close to answers I've been looking for for almost as many years as you've been alive. And I'll be damned if I let a couple blaster burns slow me down now. I don't need rest; I need to keep moving." She turned to Foyi then with a fierce gaze. "And your sister needs you to keep moving."

Foyi nodded. "You're right. If you think you can keep up, we'll keep moving."

Vaevi scoffed. "Keep up, girl? I'll be leaving you behind."

Foyi smirked mischievously. "We'll see about that, old woman."

The trio set off from where they had paused on the side of the road, proceeding down the sloping portion of the road as it descended into darker, more tangled areas of the jungles ahead, the mushrooms and foliage growing so closely together that they would have had to constantly hack through the trunks and bulbous fronds with blades and lightsaber in order to make any progress. But with the road available to them, they found their trek faster and less difficult than ever before. Though the majority of the tracks left by repulsors had devolved into a trail of mud interspersed with dark, rippling puddles of rainwater and fungal ichor, they watched where they placed their feet, and moved swiftly so as not to be slowed by the cloying mud.

The road continued to descend, until it leveled out and curved to their right. This curve had previously presented a blind corner for them due to the thicket of jungle around which it wound. From here, the road stretched ahead of them, reaching to the hazy horizon, continuing to descend slightly with the gentle slopes of the ground before them. The puddles in the middle of the tracks had succumbed to Felucia's gravitational pull, elongating into a delta of rivers in microcosm, the minute rapids the rushing water described eroding more of the mud and carrying pebbles and bits of fungal matter with them. Barely seen through the haze before them, the sloping path meandered back and forth slightly to negotiate sudden ridges and changes in altitude of the terrain, before disappearing once more around another bend to the right again, and judging by the canopies of the jungle below them, dropped down an incline steeper than the one they now tread. They paused at the top of that slope, looking down on the empty road before them; Vaevi retrieved her E-11s Sniper Rifle and brought the targeting scope to her eye, peering down the the slopes and into the jungle beyond. She adjusted the scope's rangefinder, then lowered the weapon and handed it to Rayf, who similarly peered through the scope, then passed it to the Twi'lek with a grim expression. Foyi accepted the weapon without a word and peered through the scope, the rangefinder piercing both distance and mist to bring the jungles beyond her reach into focus. She carefully panned the scope about, shifting her aim, sweeping her enhanced gaze upward, until she saw structures rising from the discombobulating sea of alien fungi, towers and skyscrapers, domed edifices and buildings with impressive numbers of floors. What had once been a small but modern city appeared to be no more, judging by the number of ragged edges and holes in the edifices Foyi could barely make out. Whatever former glory or purpose the city may have once boasted of, it could no longer do so now. It lay in dark ruins, in shadows beneath the dim, overcast atmosphere, lit only by distant, phosphorescent glows, marred by the remnants of war as evidenced by the carbon scoring and blasted skeletons of durasteel that were visible at even this range.

"About seven klicks out," Vaevi was saying. "Looks like one of the old Gossam cities that were here before the Clone Wars. Maybe a Sep stronghold."

"Think the younglings are being held there?" Rayf asked no one in particular, peering toward the region he knew the settlement to be, though he could not see it without the aid of macrobinoculars or the rifle's scope.

"Seems a likely place," Vaevi surmised. "Lots of hiding places, and easy to fortify. Large enough it won't be easy to find...him, or wherever he's keeping the kids. If this creep is actually Arctan, I can assure you he has plenty of contingencies for anyone trying to get too close to him, so we can expect traps or ambushes if we go in there."

"We don't even know yet if this road even goes there," Rayf retorted.

"It does," Foyi interjected assuredly. "Those ruins are where we need to go. I've got a bad feeling about that place."

Rayf gave her a bewildered look. "What do you mean?"

"Didn't you feel that when you looked at the ruins?" Foyi responded, shouldering the rifle once more and wincing slightly as the stock contacted her injured shoulder. "That place...it feels like despair. Hopelessness. Pain. Death."

"This whole planet feels like that," Rayf replied. "But if you've got a feeling about that place, good or bad, then I'm game for checking it out."

Foyi passed the sniper rifle back to its owner and drew her own A295, the eerie and grotesque sensations she had experienced upon looking at the ruins making her nervous, the weapon in her hands providing a minor sense of security, even if it was ultimately false. She began to pick her way down the incline, her feet slipping along the treacherous stretches of mud and the rivulets of running water. Vaevi followed close behind, with Rayf bringing up the rear. The Iktotchi continued to caution her pair of companions as they walked, though she kept her eyes on the slippery mud beneath her feet. "When we reach the city, we can't just charge in like a herd of banthas. We need to scout the perimeters, gather as much information about the place that we can before we actually approach, see if we can determine exactly where he's holed up, where the younglings are. Then we make our move." She interrupted herself with a curse as her foot slid through a thick swath of particularly liquid mud. "Whatever Force the two of you wield, we can't just dive headlong and expect to keep-" Vaevi stumbled again, but it was not due to a loss of equilibrium on the treacherous terrain, for there was a shocked expression on her features, her face contorted as though she had been shot again. Both Rayf and Foyi stopped abruptly and grabbed one of her arms to keep her steady as she swayed, her eyes focusing and refocusing on something only she could see, before she finally shook herself free of whatever reverie had seized her.

"What just happened?" Rayf asked as Vaevi's arm quivered in his grasp.

"She's had another vision," Foyi surmised, staring into Vaevi's flickering eyes.

Vaevi put a hand to her head as though it pained her, then shook herself free of her companions' support. "We need to get off this road. Get to cover..."

"Why?" Rayf demanded. "What did you see?"

His answer came in the form of a noise, a new sequence of thunder too rhythmic to be natural. None of the trio had any problem identifying the noise as the vociferations of repulsors and speedercraft, and so they hastened to the side of the road, where they plunged in amongst a thick tangle of fungi flanking the road, fully immersed in the shadows cast by the mushrooms overhead. They had barely hidden themselves before a ST-101 Repulsortruck began to trundle up the slippery slope, its sputtering repulsors throwing splashes of dirt as it hovered low over the path. It was weighted down by multiple scarred, rusted, and beaten battle droids, a collection of B1 and B2 models, armed with a menagerie of weapons dating from before, during, and well after the Clone Wars. The tinny voices and strange babble of the droids could only barely be heard over the whine of the engines as the speeder truck passed by, slinging mud across the strands of fungi behind which they hid, followed by a wash of heated air and smoke. The speeder passed within seconds and continued up the slope, following the path carved through the jungle, and rounding the curve above them, disappearing from sight. Rayf began to stand once more, but Foyi grabbed a handful of his jacket and yanked him back down to a crouching position, for her keen ears and Force-attuned senses had detected the cacophony of machinery from further down the slope. Confirming her senses, a pair of repulsortrucks followed several meters behind, their engines _clanging_ loudly, denoting the state of disrepair in which they were operating. These were laden with even more droids than the first repulsorcraft had been, heavily armed and obviously looking for something, based on the way their bodies and heads continued to swivel as they passed, their scanners undoubtedly sweeping the edges of the road. Foyi, Vaevi, and Rayf stayed low, crouching or lying in the mud and colonies of mold. As the pair of speeders continued past their hidden position, they remained stationary, waiting as the sounds of their vehicles fade, only to be replaced by yet another rumble of an approaching vessel. This revealed itself to be an A-A5 Heavy Speeder Truck, its exterior plating heavily pockmarked by dents and the faded dings of blasterfire or other projectiles that had failed to pierce the vehicles armor. Due to the enclosed nature of the vessel, the companions could not see what this vehicle transported, but likely it was more droids, or something even worse. The heavy speeder followed the previous three up the sloping path, and with the groaning of faulty engines, the vessel turned the curve and left their sight, the only evidence of its continuing existence the grinding sounds that echoed through the jungle and across the road to their ears.

Vaevi strained to hear the vessels as distance degenerated the sounds their poorly-maintained engines created, then turned to Rayf with a wry look on her countenance. " _That's_ what I saw."

"Good thing you did," Foyi interjected. "Normally, my sense of approaching danger through the Force would have given me some warning of those speeders and the droids they carried, but it's been so unreliable on this world."

"The Dark Side clouds everything," Rayf added, to which Foyi gave a confirming nod.

Vaevi stood on shaking legs, peering between the stalks of fungi at the road and the new swirls left in the mud and rivulets of liquid scum the vehicles had disturbed in their passing. "What do you suppose that was? Are there still Separatist holdouts on this planet?"

"Had I not seen a caravan of clankers roll past, I would have rejected that idea out of hand," Rayf replied, running a hand through his hair, then flinging droplets of rain from his palm in disgust. "It doesn't seem likely, considering the Empire has had a steady presence on this planet since the end of the Clone Wars, and before the Empire, the Republic decimated most of the Separatist infrastructure on Felucia."

"Then what did we just see?" Vaevi asked again.

Rayf shrugged. "Malfunctioning droids looking to settle the frontier? A droid revolution?"

"A personal army of reprogrammed battle droids?" Foyi suggested darkly. Her companions' gaze fell on her, and her _lekku_ twitched involuntarily with mild agitation. "What if that was some sort of security force for the bandits and colonists scattered somewhere on this planet? What if it was a private army for them? Or for one person alone?"

"Like the Shepherd," Rayf finished the thought breathlessly.

Foyi nodded. "We saw the tracks left by droids back at that old Separatist base where Tama and other children were dropped off and kept in cells. It seems that bastard has been using droids as his minions, and probably guards to keep those he kidnaps under his thumb. Those were probably _his_ droids who almost ran us down."

"They weren't just traveling," Vaevi murmured, emerging from the cover provided by the shadows beneath the mushrooms and kneeling beside the road. "They were patrolling. Searching. Looking for something."

"Or someone," Rayf remarked as he cautiously stepped onto the road again, his hands waiting by his sides to snatch one of the weapons kept there. "Probably us," he added flippantly. "Despite all our efforts, we haven't exactly been inconspicuous about our presence here. Considering all the fights we've been in since landing, we might as well have spent a few hours firing blasters wildly in the air until everyone and everything that wants to kill us found us."

"If those droids are looking for something, it does seem rather convenient that they would barely miss us," Foyi agreed. "They're probably after us."

"Let's hope they are," Vaevi replied sourly. When she received incredulous expressions from both the human and Twi'lek, she elaborated with a gesture down the sloping section of road they had intended to traverse. "If they're out here looking for us, it'll be easier to sneak into those ruins and find the Shepherd and the younglings. Assuming that's where they are, and assuming those droids came from there."

"One way to find out," Rayf replied nonchalantly as he turned to resume his trek along the perimeter of the mud-soaked thoroughfare. "I'm tired of all this sneaking around anyway."

The three companions continued moving down the gentle incline, walking along the edges of the muddy track so that they might be able to dive back under cover of the jungle if any other convoys of potential enemies were to appear. They moved more quickly than they had before, keeping low and staying beneath the shadows across the road cast by the mushrooms rising above them. Foyi kept a tight grip on the blaster rifle in her hands, keeping her head on a swivel to take in as much of her surroundings as possible as she ran forward and down, while she continually sent ripples of thought and emotion into her external and metaphysical environments. The Dark Side continued to churn within her feelings, twisting them to dark thoughts of fear for her sister, of the incessant apprehension that pervaded every waking thought. The jungle seemed full of glaring eyes belonging to terrors existing merely to snuff out her own existence. She had to constantly remind herself to remain focused on the present, to keep her feelings in check and her senses close to her own body and mind, lest the illness under which Felucia suffered infect her as well.

Foyi, Rayf, and Vaevi reached the bottom of the slope, sliding through the mud the last few meters and splashing in a depression filled with standing water, deep enough to encompass their ankles in entirety. They extricated themselves from the slurry of mud at the bottom of the pool, Vaevi having the most difficulty due to her injured thigh, though she refused any further help from the Twi'lek or human. Upon reaching this more level area of the path, they turned to peer around the corner created by a curve about the jungle's perimeters, to see the road stretching almost directly before them, bisecting the jungle in as straight and narrow a path as they had seen yet on this world, with the silhouettes of the ruins they had spotted rising in the distance. If the road continued immediately forward as it seemed to, it inevitably intersected the outer limits of the ruins they could barely glimpse through the mist and dying storm. Rayf looked back at his companions over his shoulder. "Looks to be all downhill from here. Maybe we can just sit down and let gravity and the mud take us the rest of the way down."

"Would sure beat all this vapin' walking," Vaevi grumbled, rubbing her thigh again.

"Well I for one don't want to spend the next week scrubbing mud and stones out of my shorts," Foyi replied acidly. She gave the Iktotchi a deprecatory glance. "If you're tired of walking, I'm sure Rayf would be happy to carry you."

Rayf gave Vaevi an appraising glance before the bounty hunter could retort. "I wouldn't mind carrying around such a fine woman, though she looks kinda heavy, and I'm still a little warp-lagged."

"You'll be dead if you try anything, _sleemo_ ," Vaevi growled in response.

Rayf took a step back, mock horror on his countenance. His regard flicked to the Zeison Sha in a silent plea. "Foyi...you're the one who's so stellar at telekinesis...maybe you would carry her?"

"I don't need to be carried by either one of you nerfherders!" came Vaevi's heated response over Foyi's chuckle.

Foyi opened her mouth to continue the lighthearted discourse even as she took the next few steps across the road, only for her words to be disrupted by a cacophony of energy discharges, the sounds of blasterfire screaming back and forth in a heated firefight occurring at some great distance farther up the road, back from whence they had come. The three companions whipped around to look up the slope shrouded in mist and splatters of rain, but their sight revealed nothing out of the ordinary. They listened as they heard the staccato explosions of energy weapons being used in autofire mode, then a lengthy pause, followed by a truly spectacular discord of energy bolts scything through air and unknown materials...or creatures.

"Sounds like those droids found something to shoot at," Vaevi remarked without concern. "At least it isn't us. I'm not keen on being target practice again anytime soon."

Foyi barely registered that the bounty hunter had spoken, for she was concentrating instead on the sudden influx of feelings and sensations the Force was granting her, almost before she had sent searching ripples of her subconscious back up the slope. She felt a sudden spike of fear from multiple sources, from multitudinous presences that could barely be felt at such a distance and through the churning, frothing waves of the Dark Side. But these presences were not native to Felucia, for they were marred only by fear, anxiety, and pain, not the corruption of the darker aspect of the Force. All this she realized in moments, only to recognize one of those presences, exuding a subconscious plea for aid, a desperate cry for someone or something to save them from the unfeeling droids and their lethal hyphens of energy. A presence she knew as well as her own.

Foyi reacted without thinking, immediately spinning about and racing as fast as her slogging feet could carry her back up the slope they had traversed only moments before. Rayf and Vaevi both called after her, throwing caution to the wind as they tried to keep up to her desperate scramble. Vaevi stumbled and dropped to a single knee, but Rayf's long stride and ceaselessly energetic limbs caught up to her, and he seized one of the Twi'lek's arms, arresting her flight. Foyi whirled on him angrily, attempting to extricate her arm from his grasp, but she saw only bewilderment and worry on his countenance. "Foyi! Put on the retros a sec! What's wrong?!"

Foyi finally pulled her arm free and hugged her rifle tight, so distraught she could barely draw breath to answer him. "It's Tama. I can sense her up there, where the blasterfire is coming from! We have to help her!"

Neither Rayf nor Vaevi needed any further encouragement, joining her in her desperate sprint back up the slope, their feet kicking up mud and splashing their clothes with water and fungal ichor. They crested the top of the slope within minutes and immediately vectored toward the side of the road as they rounded the corner described by encroaching jungle, dropping into fast, scuttling crouches, their weapons forward. They pushed past the reaching tendrils and fronds of Felucian foliage until the road came into full view, the mud now marred by the smoldering wreckage of one of the ST-101 Repulsortrucks they had narrowly avoided previously. The ground was cratered with dark scars and newly-formed puddles from misfired blasters, while lashes of rain _pinged_ with an eerie echo in the dark atmosphere on the metallic corpses of battle droids. Most were stitched with blaster wounds and carbon scoring, exuding sparks into the glistening puddles, while a few displayed plating that was burned nearly black. Smoke rose from the hungry flames that nibbled and flickered upon the ruined engines, while steam curled upward from rain striking rapidly cooling metal plating. Amongst the bodies of the automata lay a smaller, organic corpse devoid of a head, clothed in filthy, ragged garments that may have once been a simple tunic and travelers' trousers. Foyi's blood ran cold upon seeing the body, her fears twisting the decapitated features into those of her sister's; but closer inspection revealed the body belonging to a humanoid species unlike Twi'leks. She had no clue what the child's face must have looked like, but his body was covered in tiny scales of a dark brown and ocher in coloration, his hands ending in a trio of dexterous digits with frills of sharper scales. Foyi took a step back, feeling bile rising in her throat at the sight of a splash of gore and blood in the puddle forming from the ragged stump of his neck. She felt a moment of guilt as a sense of relief flooded her upon realizing the body did not belong to her sister.

Vaevi dropped to her haunches beside the body, muttering something unintelligible. She peered closely at the corpse, her face set in a snarl hovering on the verge of uncontrollable rage. "A youngling," she explained in a hoarse tone. "A Gormak boy, I believe. Not many of them out in the galaxy...they tend to stick pretty close to Voss. Those droids butchered him..."

Rayf occupied himself with inspecting the droids lying in pieces across the mud, or dangling over the smoldering sides of the open cockpit of the speeder truck. "And someone vaped these droids. Looks like multiple someones, judging by the amount of blast points on their armor and the repulsortruck." He gazed the opposite direction of the road, where it meandered up into the jagged cliffs and undulating ridges rising to the shadowy high country beyond. "So where are they? And where are the other droids?"

Foyi stood, letting her eyes fall closed and forcing her breathing to slow, letting her fear and desperation leak from her consciousness until she could think clearly once more. She let her mind bleed outward from her physical form, her perceptions fluctuate like waves lapping against her external environment. Part of her mind willed her to search, to consciously reach beyond until she found the presence she so longed to feel again, but she ignored its insistence and instead let the Force guide her to what she sought. And within moments, she caught an echo of Tama's presence, the ripples and minor currents she had left in her wake niggling her consciousness and provide her direction. Her eyes snapped open, muttering, "She was here...only recently. We are but minutes behind them, maybe more."

As if to confirm what she already felt within her soul, blasterfire rang out over the din of the intermittent rain. The trio's attention was drawn to the noise of violence, which echoed through the hazy air above them, meandering from the hills into which the road climbed and redirecting off the jungle's tangled morass. Rayf dropped into the mud from his perch upon the repulsortruck's wreckage at the same time Vaevi stood once more. "We need to get moving," Foyi managed in as calm of a voice as she could muster, and together, the three companions continued their sprint, clutching weapons to their chests as they stepped high and quickly across the mud. Running for the sounds of violence, of shots of energy traded between combatants. Foyi expanded her consciousness again, calling recklessly through the Force with her entire being, hoping that Tama still lived, that she would understand that her sister was coming for her. Foyi just hoped they would be in time to make a difference.


	32. Chapter 32

Chapter 32

The sounds of sporadic laserfire and the flickering extrasensory perceptions of ripe and raw fear were their only guides as Foyi, Rayf, and Vaevi scurried up the undulating slopes, their speed slowed by the thick mud in which they had to constantly extricate their feet. The marks left by repulsors were evident within that mud, and thus the trail described by the droid-manned vehicles was not difficult to follow. The road was even more accommodating to their search, for it continued climbing the ascending slopes and into the mist-shrouded highlands. The further they sprinted, the more evidence they saw of beings having recently traveled the track, judging by the smattering of multitudinous footprints beside the ominous splashes of mud and filthy liquid left by the speeder trucks in dire pursuit. Foyi's danger sense only grew more palpable, a dark stone jutting from the depths of the Force upon which her perceptions continually crashed and frothed. The blasterfire grew louder, echoing eerily through the contours of the heights and hills rising about them, the moldering, everpresent jungle reaching out with slimy appendages and dripping overhangs to further confuse the locations of the violent vociferations. Foyi could feel her heart hammering in her ears, keeping a steady dirge of doom to which the slurping noises her feet made in the mud kept a rhythmic, if syncopated beat. She tried desperately to maintain her focus, to find the rational core of her being that allowed her to remain connected and balanced within the Force. But her mind would not cease screaming in fear, in silent pleas that unfolded as shrieks in the Unifying Force, cries meant to call her sister's attention. But other parts of her mind prayed in a litany of hope and fear, begging that she would find her sister once more. That she would find Tama alive and whole. That she would not be too late to save her.

They crested another ridge, an outcropping of stone so covered in mold and lichens, it was practically a carpet on its own. The road had been cut brutally through the peak of the ridge, creating a shallow depression filled with shards of rock, the dirt that had once covered it washed down either side of the ridge by the rain. Foyi momentarily lost her footing on the treacherous stones and found herself taking a short tumble down the far side of the ridge, but soon arrested her fall by allowing her tumble to become a somersault. She took advantage of the roll's momentum to spring back to her feet at the opposite side of the ridge, where it dipped down from a steep slope into a gorge, the majority of the high country rising in hills of different sizes around her. She could feel Rayf and Vaevi stumbling down the slope into the ravine with her; she paid them no attention as her eyes fixed upon an oblong object over which she stumbled. The object gave under her feet, and she nearly fell before realizing she had slipped upon the corpse of a Gran boy, his face sunk halfway in the mud, the trio of eyestalks upon his countenance splayed limply to the side. Beside him lay the remains of a B2 Super Battle Droid, and only a meter beyond that, along the ravine's bottom, lay another battle droid, though the spindlier form of this decapitated and dismembered automata suggested a B1 model. Foyi knew without physically examining the body that the boy was dead, for only an echo, a wisp of his presence and existence within the Force remained, suggesting he had died quite recently. She grimly turned the body over, to see a large gouge leaking coagulating blood and smoke in his abdomen, where multiple blaster bolts had been fired in close proximity, likely killing him instantaneously. Vaevi and Rayf paused by the body as well, the bounty hunter hissing in a dangerously livid tone. "They're slaughtering the remaining kids. One by one, they're hunting them down and executing them."

More blasterfire erupted in the distance, further up into the misty hills before and above them. Foyi sprang to her feet again and resumed running, clambering up the steep and rocky slopes that the trail zigzagged across in its ascension. While climbing the muddy path would most likely have been a simpler course, it would take longer if they were forced to follow its winding way. Foyi put the Force behind her movements, propelling herself in leaps beyond her normal physical abilities, jumping from the bottom of the ravine to various ledges and narrow ridges, ascending the hill in rapid fashion. She reached the top of the hill and did not even look back to see if Rayf and Vaevi continued to follow her. The sounds of blasterfire had increased, echoing so loudly in her ears she was certain they were mere meters from her.

Foyi scrambled down the other side of the hill and lost herself in the wild, cloying jungle beyond, bulbous towers, fungal fronds, and tubular strands slapping across her limbs, torso, and face as she called upon the Force again, letting it give her a speed comparable to that of the vehicles that had come through this way minutes before. She barely noticed the sights around her had taken on less presence; instead of the blackness of the void, they had become more amorphous and gray. She found the road again and sprinted along its length, skipping over more damaged fungi, the detritus left by droids that had been pulverized by laser blasts. The narrow gap in the jungle canopies created by the road showed a dim light finally piercing the mist in the atmosphere, rays of the rising sun slashing through the tumultuous clouds that described the last vestiges of the storm that had dominated the night. Meanwhile, the intermittent thunder permeating the air was slowly dying away, being drowned out by a droning that only grew louder the more distance she covered, the roar emerging from an unknown number of sources. Initially, she assumed the growing roar to be from the repulsortrucks that must be somewhere ahead of her, but the sounds were too constant and aqueous to belong to the malfunctioning engines and repulsor coils they had heard before. While these sounds were puzzling, they barely drew her attention, for they were punctuated by the continuing explosive blasts of weapons fire being exchanged. Foyi sank further beneath the waves of the Force and let it course through her body, reinvigorating her limbs and putting the wind at her back. The world blurred around her, until the haphazard and grotesque shapes of the fungi to either side of her fell away, and she slowed to a stop as she came into a clearing, an opening stretching for kilometers in a great valley of wildly disparate elevations.

Foyi paused and dropped behind a thicket of fungal fronds, her eyes roving over her new surroundings, feelings of wonder and apprehension becoming a churning, confusing mixture within her consciousness. Before her stretched a great valley, the highlands the road had been winding through giving way to cliffs hundreds of feet high, dropping into a pit that was kilometers in diameter. The deepest fathoms of that sharp valley were hidden from sight, for a storm of mist rose from those depths, created by the half dozen or so waterfalls that streamed into the valley, fed by the dying rain and the rivers that twisted and converged on the far slopes in a delta of steaming swamplands atop the moss-carpeted hilltops. The roar she had heard was nearly deafening this close to the cliffs and waterfalls, suffusing the atmosphere with a clamor that practically drowned out the continued errant blasts of laserfire. The light of Felucia's primary filtered through nomadic banks of clouds, slowly migrating to the horizons as they exhausted themselves of precipitation, allowing rays of thermal energy to lance down into the mist of the fathomless depression, casting rainbows in the morning sun. Foyi took the briefest of moments to recognize the natural beauty of the scene before her, though her attention was inevitably drawn to the flashes of energy discharges in her peripheral vision.

Almost a kilometer from her position the road continued onward, drawing close to the lip of the cliffs that dropped into the waterfall-fed mists, until it met a large outcropping of rock and mushrooms growing outward like tumors. There, the path curved around and wound just beneath a lip of stone and dangling fungal strands, and it was in the shadows cast by this formation, lying between the outcropping and the cleft, that the remaining speeder trucks had gathered. The droids the vehicles had carried were arrayed in haphazard lines, maintaining a thunderous fusillade of laserfire up at the cleft's ledge, which was spewing burning organic slag and molten rock in response. From atop that cleft came occasional blasts in answer, fired by small humanoid figures she could not discern at this distance, crouched behind rocks and thick vegetation, only popping out of cover infrequently to land a few shots upon the droids below. Some of those blasts connected, and she saw one of the battle droids fall due to the prevalence of small blaster burns across its carapace, but the droids arrayed below the cliff continued their withering assault. An assault that was forcing their quarry to remain in cover, while also serving as a distraction for the heavily-armored and battered A-A5 Speeder Truck, which was moving ponderously around the exchange, its pilot looking for a means by which it might scale the ridge and approach the children from behind. To trap them in a prison of droids, armor plating, and moldering rock.

Rayf bounded to her side, having used the Force so closely attuned to his own body, to carry him up the slope with unnatural swiftness to arrive at her side. Once again, his breathing was normal, his body exuding no signs of physical distress. He too took in the scene before them with a quick glance and reached to his belt, pulling his WESTAR-34 Blaster Pistol, while his other hand hovered at his belt, as though he was considering whether he should wield his damaged but functional wan-shen, or the lightsaber he had stolen. Vaevi arrived mere moments later, breathing heavily due to her wounds, but no less determined than her compatriots. She dropped to the knee of her uninjured leg, then unslung her E-11s Sniper Rifle and shouldered it, peering through the rangefinder at the battle beyond. "There're younglings on that ridge. And the droids are trying to sweep around to surround their position."

"I'm going down there," Foyi growled, ramming the stock of her A295 to her shoulder. She could feel Tama near that cleft now, the proximity of her presence as relieving as it was alarming, for the wild, frothy waves she exuded from her essence were capped with dark fear.

"As am I," Rayf intoned. He glanced at the Twi'lek beside him, continuing in a calm voice. "We're doing this together."

Vaevi grunted in pain. "I'll only slow the two of you down. I'll stay up here, or find a better vantage point, and do what I can from range." She turned to face both Rayf and Foyi, and her countenance was so suffused with rage and grief, the pair of Force-sensitives felt a moment of vertigo as they attempted to sort their own emotions from those of the Iktotchi bounty hunter's. "And if you see Arctan down there...save him for me."

"Will do," Foyi replied, and without further words, leapt free of their hiding place and slid down a muddy slope, her feet and posterior flattening colonies of mold and tiny, phosphorescent mushrooms. Rayf came running right beside her, and the pair met the bottom of the slope in a Force sprint, racing across the intervening ground separating them from those they had come to rescue. They heard blasterfire ring out closer than those being fired indiscriminately ahead of them, and Foyi saw droids that had taken stationary positions begin to fall, laser blasts knifing through weak points in their armor or disintegrating heads. The droids noticed their comrades falling to the impeccable aim of Vaevi, turning toward the direction of the new threats in time to see a Twi'lek female and a male human rushing toward them with blasters drawn, moving far too fast for beings of their size and capabilities. The droids opened fired, attempting to track these new enemies, but their blaster bolts went wide, or were dodged entirely, only for lasers to spit from the blasters of their enemies, impacting the rusty and pockmarked armor of several battle droids. Droids began to fall to the impossibly fast assault, though only three were significantly damaged or destroyed before the machines' rudimentary tactical subroutines kicked in and they began to seek cover behind the sturdy armor of their hovering repulsortrucks. They set up a firing line and unleashed waves of lethal energy through the air; Foyi and Rayf were forced to halt their charge and angle for the rock outcropping, diving against its glistening contours as hyphens of scarlet light screamed about them. A Super Battle Droid lumbered around one of the speeder trucks in order to gain a better sightline on the pair of combatants, only to be blown off its feet by sniper fire from Vaevi, hidden somewhere upon the slope they had just left.

Foyi leaned out of cover and switched her blaster rifle to autofire, unleashing a stream of bolts, most of which left scorch marks on the carbon-scored flanks of one of the ST-101 Repulsortrucks, while two of her bolts found their mark. A battle droid lost its head and began to stagger around, its articulated digits flailing about for the vital piece of itself. A super battle droid raised its arm over the side of the vehicle to fire, only to accept a blaster bolt that burned through its processors, dropping it out of sight with a spray of sparks. She slunk back behind the cover she and Rayf shared, and let Rayf reach around her, firing a quartet of shots, their shrieks ending in a pair of wails from battle droids. He slammed himself against the slippery rock as a stream of laserfire sizzled through the space he had been leaning out into. His steely gaze met Foyi's. "The kids have stopped firing."

Foyi peered carefully around the edge of the rock, laserfire nearly blinding her as it darted past her vision. She focused her gaze upon the ledge several meters away, the position of height the Shepherd's retaliating victims had adopted to combat the droids sent to execute them. She could no longer glimpse any of their shapes, and neither could she sense any friendly presences, though she doubted she could concentrate properly in the heat of such a firefight. Her gaze swept to the side, where the A-A5 had been making its way around the ledge, so that whatever horrors it carried within could be disgorged upon the slope behind the kids' position, allowing the droids to rush up the slope and catch them between themselves and the edge of the cleft. But now the vehicle had paused, its pilot undoubtedly attracted by the fight that had broken out from a new set of opponents from the opposite direction; the speeder had halted its curving progress about the cleft, and the rear cargo bay door was folding downward to create a boarding ramp. Foyi instinctively fired a burst of lasers through that widening opening, and was greeted by the static of a vocoder malfunctioning, the clang of a metal body striking the vehicle's deck. The door opened fully, and Rayf joined her in firing through the gaping maw of the armored speeder, but more droids were already rushing down, B1s and B2s, their blasters blazing and joining the fusillade that already chipped away at the companions' cover. Foyi and Rayf were forced to scoot farther around the perimeter of the immense boulder they had claimed as cover, shards of superheated rock sizzling on the wet ground about their feet.

"We're pinned!" Rayf shouted above the clamor of shrieking energy and blasts of fire on rock. Foyi flinched as the concussive screams of sniper fire echoed across the valley, followed by the metallic _spang_ of that energy splitting duranium armor.

"We need to get to the kids!" Foyi insisted, trying to stand enough to put on a Force-augmented sprint around the peripherals of the firefight. But further blasterfire forced her to a crouch again. She cursed loudly and viciously at her circumstances, then fired blindly around the edge of the rock, most of which was dripping down its sides in a molten stream of slag. She heard her blaster bolts connect with something, but whatever it was did not squawk in protest.

"We can't get to them without getting vaped!" Rayf responded. "We need a distraction!"

Foyi reached out with tendrils of sensation, ignoring the storm of deadly energy and searching for the presences of the children she had felt, the essence of her sister. The Force was in even greater turmoil than she had felt previously; the region they had found themselves in, despite its natural beauty, was a boiling cauldron of Dark Side waters. Looking for Tama was like dipping her hand into those waters, and struggling to ignore the pain as their heat and viscosity melted her skin off in sheets. She reeled back against the solid stone at her back, gasping for breath. She had not been able to sense Tama, save for traces of her presence. Tama had left, likely fleeing for the uncharted depths of the forest, not realizing her sister had arrived to save her, missing a reunion by meters and seconds alone. Foyi let out another string of vitriol, which drew Rayf's attention to her, irritation evident on his face. "Are you actually going to fire back at them, or just sit there being creative with your language?"

"Tama's gone!" Foyi growled back, flinching as another laser blast flew far too near to her knee for comfort. "Her and the other kids! They used us as a distraction and fled into the jungle!"

"They better appreciate it, then," Rayf replied sarcastically. He stood up just enough to lean around and fire shots from his blaster pistol again, then leap back, letting loose a curse of his own.

"What?" Foyi asked. She saw the serious grimace on his face, which only prompted the question again, more insistently this time. " _What?!_ "

"We're in trouble," he replied in a tone that sounded more irritated than fearful.

The Twi'lek risked a glance past the distorting waves of heat emanating from the boulder so that she could get a better view of the Trask Heavy Speeder, and the droids trotting out from the vehicle's cargo bay. There were at least a dozen more mechanized opponents joining the firefight, bringing blasters ranging from the Clone Wars to the more contemporary era to bear. As they trotted down the loading ramp, they arrayed themselves in a tight, protective formation around another machine, a wheel-shaped vehicle in brown armored plating, making a thunderous clamor as it propelled itself down the ramp and across the ground. The battle droids around it spread out to give it more room to maneuver, but there were still too many laser blasts flying and droids in the way for Foyi to get a clear shot at whatever the machine was, certain it could only represent some new and dangerous obstacle for her and Rayf to overcome. She had to pull her head back a moment as the Force warned her of an impending blaster bolt that whizzed far too close to her nose for comfort, then dared to look once more. She glanced around the boulder in time see the curved machine unfolding itself, a quartet of narrow limbs emerging from the bottom of the armored "wheel" to create a stand of legs. From the center of that wheel thrust forward a cluster of glowing red photoreceptors, while a semicircular portion of the wheel rose higher into a sort of hood, a trio of blaster cannons extending from beneath the shadows cast by that "hood". As the fearsome droid stood upright on its quartet of sharp-ended legs, either side opened and extended outward, oblong plates of brown armor displaying a pair of repeating blaster cannons. Foyi raised her blaster rifle to line up a shot as the droid began to turn about to face the boulder they continued to use as cover, but there was a sudden fizzle of energy, and a spherical ray shield enveloped the droid, encasing its entire frame in a sanctuary of protective energy. Foyi gave a yelp of frustration and surprise as the nearly impervious droid finished swiveling around on its insectoid legs and unleashed a tempest of laser blasts from all the repeating blaster cannons attached to its metallic body, chewing new holes in the boulder and forcing her to leap fully back and out of sight.

Foyi clutched her blaster to her chest and hunched low over her knees, waiting as the blistering, artillery assault of the unknown droid broke off larger sections of the far side of the boulder. Even over the cacophony this created, she could hear the sounds of more mundane but still deadly battle droids maneuvering across the intervening space, likely moving in separate groups to come at both her and Rayf from either side. The boulder would not provide cover for them for much longer. She glanced at Rayf, who was similarly hunkered down, and seemed to be frantically considering all the ways he and Foyi were about to die now. "What the hell is that thing?" Foyi shouted over the screams of enemy fire.

Rayf shook his head. "Some kinda destroyer droid...never seen this model before. If the other droids don't come at us from the sides first, that thing's gonna chew right through this rock."

"Got any bright ideas?"

He grimaced. "I've got an idea. I wouldn't call it bright, and I'm gonna need your help."

Foyi sighed; whatever desperate plan he had conjured, they did not have the luxury of thinking up a new one. "Doesn't have to be...it just has to work."

Rayf gestured to the rock behind them with his blaster pistol, while his other hand went to his belt again, brandishing the lightsaber hilt but keeping it unlit for the moment. "Can you move this boulder really quickly through the Force? Can you throw it at all the droids?"

Foyi looked up and around at the size of the stone outcropping, reminding herself that no matter its composition, its dimensions, the Force would allow her to move it telekinetically. She looked back to Rayf and dropped her blaster at her feet, raising her hands as she gathered the Force around her, letting its waters flow through every part of her existence. Such a plan would leave them without a spot of cover, lest they were to move quickly and find more barriers between themselves and the blaster bolts in the form of the scarred and pitted hulls of the remaining repulsorcraft. Doing so could result in their deaths, but if they sat and did nothing, their deaths were assured.

Foyi scrambled around and faced the boulder, her hands touching its slimy, overgrown surface, that tactile sensation reaffirming its existence within her mind and extrasensory perceptions. The force of her will manifested in the Force, the atmosphere vibrating with a deep, throaty drone as she imagined the boulder uprooting itself from the moss and mold that clung to it, rising in air, and hurtling itself toward the droids. The target in her mind's eye was the new shielded droid, an opponent that would be successful in negating almost all attacks with her blaster she might manage, but doubted its ray shields could withstand the enormity of a rock hurtling toward it with all the speed and destructive force of a antipersonnel rocket. Her eyes snapped open in time to see the boulder she already knew to be aloft speeding half a meter over the ground, crossing the few meters between herself and her opponents fast enough to stir her _lekku_ with the air currents it made. The shock of that boulder being hurled into the midst of the droids was surprising to even her, the ground heaving beneath her as metal squealed and sparks flew like wild torrents of rain. The boulder clipped almost a dozen battle droids in its ballistic path, cutting some completely in half or crushing their carapaces into useless slag, while others were bowled over but still functional. Foyi gritted her teeth and brought the Force to greater intensity in the boulder's wake, granting a small boost of speed that hurtled it directly into the shield of the destroyer droid variant. She could feel the resistance of that shield for the barest moment as it tried to counteract the kinetic energy of the supernaturally-thrown boulder, but the droid's shield generator overloaded within seconds, and the boulder's weight came squarely down upon the destroyer droid. There was a flash of fire and sparks, and Foyi was greeted to the satisfactory sound of the droid creaking and squealing under the pressure, forcibly folded into a pile of smoldering, smoking scrap that could not easily be identified as a machine, boulder smashing the metallic pulp into the soft ground upon which it had stood.

Rayf had not remained idle while Foyi telekinetically threw the immense and partially-melted boulder into the midst of the droids' ranks. As the mass of stone left its berth, Rayf took off in a sprint behind it, his blaster pistol in one hand, the lightsaber in the other. His WESTAR-34 spat fire as he closed the distance, putting bolts into a pair of battle droids that had been staggered by the flying boulder, only nicked as they tried to dodge its airborne passage. But the droids Foyi had attacked with the cumbersome piece of terrain were not the only ones arrayed against them, as still others continued to keep to the relative cover provided by the stationary repulsorcraft. They turned their fire upon the approaching Matukai, laser blasts flinging through the air toward him. Rayf dodged back and forth, maneuvering his feet and twisting his body to allow the bolts to pass within mere millimeters of his clothing or flesh. He fired a few more bolts, his shots flying wide or impacting the dented hulls of the vehicles, so focused upon attempting to dodge the incoming fire he could not properly aim. The destroyer droid's cannons tracked toward his rolling, cartwheeling form, but Foyi's boulder planted it in the mud with explosive force. Rayf took the opportunity to drop on the opposite side of one of the speeder trucks, lowering rapidly into a crouch, his hand flashing down to his holster and ramming his blaster pistol in its sheathe. With a focused expression that suddenly became serene, he brought his other hand to the lightsaber's hilt and ignited it, the red blade springing into existence with a curious drone. Even as Foyi let her telekinetic hold on the boulder go, Rayf sprang upward, the Force prepelling him upright and back as he executed a backflip that carried him over the width of the speeder truck, landing on his feet just centimeters behind the firing line of droids using that same vehicle for their cover. He launched into a series of twirls, slashes, and stabs, the scarlet blade blurring into fans of sanguine light bisecting the limbs, torsos, and heads of droids. He had launched into one of the fantastic and blinding martial forms indicative of one with Matukai training, though the reach of the lightsaber was far shorter than his wan-shen's; his hands carried the blade in great arcs and spins as he cut through the droids, his feet carrying him in quick bursts of Force-augmented speed, from droid to droid. Whereas with his signature weapon he would have attacked with quick, decisive, but carefully placed strikes, the nature of the lightsaber prompted him to strike with aggression Foyi had only seen displayed in the throne room of Yuelo. Shards and shreds of droids with cloven edges glowing white-hot flew all about his relentless onslaught, the lightsaber screaming through the air, sparks erupting like enraged sparks as the blade contacted mechanized armor plating. He was a blur of limbs and crimson light, bouncing and whirling between so many combatants, the droids falling away in pieces and slag, like a deadly game of smashball, leaving the unfortunate automata malfunctioning and "dying" in the Matukai's wake.

Foyi, for once, did not allow herself to become enraptured by Rayf's skills, nor feel the pure joy and sense of belonging that had exuded his presence in the Force at wielding a lightsaber again, using it to cut down proponents of disorder, violence, and depravity. Her focus turned back to the cleft where the children she had seen at a distance had been, where she had last sensed her sister. Ignoring the stray blaster bolts that whipped through the air around her, Foyi pushed herself into another sprint, falling beneath the waves of the Force and letting its rejuvenating waters course through her veins and muscles, giving her the energy to streak past the boulder, leaping over smoldering scraps of droids, and plunging into the jungles just past the cleft. She ran between the towering mushrooms and into the deepening shadows, leaving the sounds of Rayf's lightsaber squealing as it bisected metal, the retorts of sniper blasts picking off droids Rayf had yet to cut down, the clamor of the menagerie of waterfalls pouring into the beautiful valley behind her. There were few droids to attack them left, and Foyi had full confidence that her companions could handle the remainders of the mechanized army the Shepherd had brought to bear. As she ran further into the tangled and darkening jungle, she could feel the Dark Side gathering somewhere ahead of her, becoming more palpable, like a tsunami of overwhelming void pressing upon her consciousness from every direction, threatening to drown her.

But Foyi pushed through it, refusing to be slowed as she rushed headlong into the jungle, unsure of where she was going but knowing she must get there as soon as possible. She could feel Tama now, could feel her abject fear in the Force, striking her like a cold spray directly in the face. Foyi added more speed to her hurtling form. She had to get to Tama. She had to save her. Even as her feet blurred below her and the world transformed into streaks of phosphorescent lights and whirling darkness about her eyes, she reached out past the confines of her body. _Tama! I'm coming! Hold on!_

* * *

Tama stumbled through the jungle beyond the cleft, rushing as fast as her aching, bleeding feet would carry her, her DH-17 Carbine dangling from fingers so weary, they only held fast to the weapon due to the tendons locking up in overuse. Nuri sprinted beside her, the Zabrak girl's breath coming in wild, ragged gasps, her head incessantly swiveling about to look for pursuers. Cyran ran close beside Nuri, gripping her wounded shoulder as the shocks of her feet contacting the mud and tendrils of fungi across the forest floor sent new shivers of pain through her wound. Ashla was to Tama's other side, though her speed was more inconsistent than the others, and she was beginning to lag behind, where Farr brought up the rear. The Rodian was chattering almost constantly in frantic Rodese under his breath, and Tama was fairly certain he would have taken off into the jungle ahead of them leaving them far behind in a mad dash for escape, had he not been wounded in the momentary last stand upon the ridge. A blaster bolt from a super battle droid had drilled through a weakened section of the cleft, sending bits of fungal flesh flying and inflicting a serious burn along Farr's thigh. It was not a mortal wound, but his leg was only partially functional, and the only reason he was running now was because of his sheer determination and fear.

Tama's environment was little more than amorphous shapes whizzing past her eyes at lightspeed as she ran, like all the images and holos of hyperspace she had seen. Her mind was a twisted tangle of fear, pain, exhaustion, and too many other emotions to even identify. She felt as though she had been running for days; her legs were merely flailing weights attached to her torso, somehow moving her forward even though her body insisted on letting Felucia's gravity draw her to the soft bed of moss and mud. After the first exchange of blasterfire with the droids under the command of "the Savior" and the resultant death of Vibak-Ol, they had fled to the high country, seeking shelter from the pursuing droids in the tangles of fungi and craggy hills they found there. But the terrain had proved as disadvantageous to them as it had the droids, and despite the many ridges and differing heights they had been forced to traverse, the droids had done so in a more coordinated and speedier fashion, aided as they were by repulsorcraft. The children had almost been slaughtered to a being in a particular ravine, when they had tumbled to its muddy bottom and been momentarily trapped there. Vo-Yees had lost his life there, his own exhaustion causing him to be seconds too slow to maintain the group's pace, and thus an easy target for a battle droid's well-placed blaster bolts. The former prisoners had been forced to leave his corpse in the mud, just as they had with Vibak-Ol, Fenn, Ossa, and Otar. The farther they ran, the more they strove to escape the violence and hellish madness about them, the more their number dwindled.

And then they had been forced to make a stand on the ridge rising from the perimeter of the waterfall valley, for both Ashla and Cyran had collapsed, nearly insensate from the exhaustion, the pain, the malnutrition that permeated their frames. And as they had lain in stupors, Tama trying desperately to awaken and revive them, the droids had fallen upon them, taking up positions around the ridge and maintaining a blistering onslaught. Nuri and Farr had returned fire with ferocity of their own, but they were only a pair of blasters against almost two dozen. And when Farr had taken a hit, Tama had turned from her ministrations to Cyran and Ashla and added her own blaster to the fracas. They had accomplished little, and the few times they had been able to emerge from cover enough just to visually mark the positions of their enemies, they had grown more disheartened with each new droid taking a step closer, the A-A5 Speeder Truck beginning a wide circuit to overrun their position from the side or rear. In that moment, even as Farr managed to motivate Cyran and Ashla with one of the harshest sequences of invective Tama had ever heard, the Twi'lek had completely lost hope. The Dark Side had closed in on her, and she had no defense against the buzzing, squealing screams of the many fell voices all pressing upon her simultaneously. She had found no peace in the realization of her impending doom; only a galaxy of fear, one completely devoid of hope.

Then blasterfire from a new source had rang out, and droids began to drop to the mud as multiple people came rushing out of the jungles from whence the children had fled, determined to destroy every single killing machine firing upon that cliff. Nuri had not hesitated in grabbing Tama's shoulder and pushing her ahead, further down the slope and away from the fighting. Once the droids were distracted by the unknown assailants and unwitting rescuers of the escaped prisoners, Tama, Nuri, Farr, Cyran, and Ashla had bolted for the deeper parts of the jungle beyond the ridge, not even daring to look back, fearing they might see the final blaster bolt that would mark the cessation of their existence.

So they were fleeing once more, with no direction, no knowledge of where they went, no purpose other than to remain breathing and to somehow survive the planet that was so intent on utterly destroying them. The jungle whirled past them, but Tama could not muster enough concentration to avoid the tangles of moss and grasping strands of fungi that seemed to leap out at her feet and drag her to the ground. Tama did not even realize she was falling before her face impacted the mud, sending a stab of pain down to the base of her skull, and she found herself rolling and flailing through a malaise of bewildering sensations, unable to make head or tail of any of them as she continued to roll across the uneven ground. Tama's momentum was arrested when she slammed against the unyielding base of an extraordinarily large mushroom. She lay there a moment, the world still swirling about her as she gasped for the air that had unceremoniously vacated her lungs. Her vision swam back into focus in time to see Nuri's face hovering before her, the girl's hands gripping her waist and shoulder as she tried to right her and pull her back to her feet. Tama did so woozily, and she subconsciously pressed a hand to her forehead in a vain attempt to alleviate the pain pounding through her cranium and arcing along the bridge of her nose, where she had mashed it into the earth. She hoped she had not broken it.

Farr stumbled up to them, his breath wheezing so hard through his snout, it produced an irritating whistle. "Why...we stand here? You want getting shot?"

Cyran and Ashla finally caught up as well, both so short of air they were unable to say anything articulate. Nuri ignored all three of them and turned to Tama, keeping a hand on her heaving back. "Where...where do we go? Those...clankers won't stay distracted for long...whoever the blazes those others were attacking 'em...where do we go now to find your sister?"

Tama clutched her temples in frustration, fear, rage, and pain, her _lekku_ coiling and stretching out about her throat. "I _don't know!_ I can't even think straight, much less...find her again!" She tried to still her voice, lowering the volume of her response; Nuri was only thinking of the survival of what was left of their group, and did not deserve her ire. "All I know...is that she was following that road...but the droids chased us the opposite way."

Farr looked back over his shoulder, where the distant sounds of blasterfire and concussive explosions could still be heard through the dim and cloistered foliage. He bent down to massage his leg, careful not to touch the scorched and blistered skin around the laser burn. "We can't go back there. Droids find us."

"Unless the others take care of them."

"We don't know how many there are," Tama supplied a pessimistic view of Nuri's hopeful assessment. "And we don't know _who_ they are. For all we know, they're bandits, or natives, or Imperials. Just 'cause they don't like battle droids very much doesn't mean they're our friends." Nuri nodded with a grimace to those suppositions, and Tama continued. "We need to get away from this area as quickly as possible, then try and circle back to the road and...pick up my sister's trail again." Tama's glance was drawn to the side as Cyran moved through her peripherals, the Duros staggering to a large stump where had once stood another enormous mushroom, though most of the stalk had fallen and rotted away, leaving a semi-level surface that provided a convenient seat. The Twi'lek turned from her resting companion and looked to Nuri and Farr again. "The Savior meant to herd us out here with his droids...we need to run from here as fast as we can, get our bearings, and regroup."

Farr was nodding his head before she had finished, and began to hobble off deeper into the forest. "Yes. Run more. Good plan. Nothing bad happen."

Tama could not determine whether he was being serious or darkly sarcastic, and she found she did not really care. She gasped once more to suck in humid, fetid air into her lungs, then nodded to Nuri in silent acknowledgment and gratitude for her help. She turned to follow the Rodian, who kept up a soft litany of Rodese epithets and snarls of pain as he moved, only to jump several centimeters in the air when Ashla let out a bloodcurdling scream.

The children whirled as one to see the Togruta having dropped her weapon, scrambling as quickly as she was able to put Nuri between herself and whatever had scared her so. Their eyes followed the line suggested by her flight, and saw Cyran still perched upon the mushroom stump, though she no longer sat still, her limbs convulsing in some perverted mockery of a dance, her eyes wide as her open mouth attempting to scream, though no sound came from her throat. Standing just behind her was a shadowy figure, a humanoid upright on two feet, though its form was slightly hunched as its hands gripped tightly to either side of Cyran's throat. Tama could not see the figure's face, nor any distinguishing characteristics, but she could suddenly feel his presence in the Force, as well as the way the Force seemed to warp in the immediate area, the exultant shrieks of the Dark Side. But what she could see and feel was Cyran's complete withering before her eyes, as though she had been inflicted with an infection that was rapidly causing her to waste away. As her gaunt frame receded to little more than dry skin stretched between limp bones, her essence dwindled as well, until Tama could no longer feel her as a sentient being in the Force, only a bright stab of pain in her gut, a cry of agony in her ears, that ceased suddenly and brutally. She tried to raise her blaster, but the unnatural flow of the Force in the immediate area, the feeling of Cyran's life force being consumed without mercy or remorse, was enough to leave her own tired presence frozen in fear. Ashla was still screaming. Farr had taken one look at the figure in the shadows and quickened his pace as best he could with an injured leg. Nuri was the only one of their number who acted with courage, despite the fear emanating from her form. She gave a cry of denial and fury and snapped her A280 to her shoulder, discharging several shots at the amorphous appendage that must be the Savior's head. But the figure was ready for such an attack; Tama felt a pulling sensation in her gut, the Force responding to the figure's will as the last vestiges of the being that had been Cyran were obliterated. The figure raised a hand so quickly the movement could not be properly seen with normal eyesight, intercepting the path of Nuri's blaster bolts and deflecting them wide of the mark with an application of the Force. One of those bolts lanced out from the figure's palm and struck Farr in his uninjured ankle, just as his flight had carried him to the limits of Tama's peripheral vision. The Rodian gave a shriek and fell in the underbrush, the gyrating fronds and continued screams of pain the only evidence of him still drawing breath. Another bolt stitched the mud at the figure's feet, nearly taking the lifeless Cyran's head off in the process, and two more blasts whirled off into the darkness of the forest beyond. One reflected off to the side and scathed Ashla's hip, causing her to stumble and fall, where her head struck the base of a mushroom with enough force to render her senseless. The final shot Nuri had discharged was reflected immediately back to its source, the crimson laser scything through the barrel of the rifle and causing the weapon to short out in her hands. Nuri cried out as the weapon practically disintegrated in her palms and blistered the flesh there, but before she could attempt to secure another weapon, or simply bring her natural weapons to bear upon the darksider she faced, the Force exploded about her, throwing her bodily through the air until she impacted one of the mushroom stalks and gravity dumped her harshly to the ground.

Which left Tama the only combatant to resist their captor's use of the Force, but even as she realized this, she was already too late to do anything about it. She felt an invisible fist rip the carbine from her frozen fingers, the blaster disappearing in a spin through the forest. Tama dropped into a fighting stance drilled into her by the Zeison Sha practices, her hand snapping the electrostaff off from her back, only for another burst of the Force to strike her in the abdomen. The wind from her lungs left her again, the electrostaff flinging from her palm and bouncing away from her reach. Tama fell to the ground, her chest heaving for air, her arms protectively wrapping themselves about her injured stomach. She reached for the Force again, begging it for aid, but pain and fear blocked her concentration and limited her connection.

Tama was still struggling to stand when a pair of old traveling boots caked in mud appeared before her, leaving deep impressions in the ground before her eyes. She wheezed as she willed her body to turn enough to look upward, to peer along the vertical length of legs sheathed within those boots, clothed in trousers splattered with mud, rent with minor tears. Her eyes continued upward to a torso covered in a tunic that may have once been part of a formal garment, or maybe even a military uniform, based on the strict cut of cloth, but age and constant use had caused it to fade, the hems to fray. Over this the figure wore a tattered trenchcoat, covering arms that dangled limply at his sides. Tama was just beginning to find her breath once more when she dared to look the rest of the way upward and met the gaze of her kidnapper, the creature who had imprisoned her on this world, who had violated the sanctity of her mind, starved her and put her through trials meant to harm and to terrify. Tama had expected to be looking up at a monster, some cacodemon leering down upon her, a horror straight out of the darker myths and spacers' tales that Pash had regaled her with. But the sight her eyes did fall upon was almost worse than that, for she found herself looking into the eyes of an Iktotchi man who, despite the eerie void in his gaze, seemed almost normal. He appeared to be middle-aged, with skin on his gaunt face just beginning to show wrinkles, and horns that appeared too small for a specimen of his maturity. He kept his lips in a grim line, the nostrils of his crooked nose flaring briefly, as though he were considering her smell. A moment passed between them as they merely held the other's gaze, and Tama felt a profound sadness falling upon her like drops of rain. It took her a moment to realize the despair did not belong to her, but was actually emanating from him, an emotion he was actively sharing through the Force, not bothering in the slightest to hide it.

The Iktotchi man slowly lowered himself into a crouch even as Tama rose to her knees, gulping air and feeling some modicum of strength and sanity return to her. She felt a part of her screaming, begging her to strike while she had the chance, to reach out to this man's face and plunge her thumbs into his eyes until only she remained amongst the living. But she could not tear her gaze from those eyes; she could not force herself to move. She did not even feel as though she remained in her own body, so surreal was this experience.

The man spoke, and his voice slipped between his teeth in a gravelly, cracking tone, as though he had not used his vocal cords in such a lengthy amount of time, they were beginning to atrophy. "We meet face to face, you and us. Vile Tama. Pretty Tama. Should have sensed the fire in you, the light of the Universe at the genesis," he babbled, and Tama found she could not determine whether he was speaking to her, or himself. He reached a hand out to her cheek, and though she flinched, she could still barely move. His fingers were startlingly soft. "But so hard, so hard it was, yes? We couldn't see...there's so much we don't see anymore. Too much darkness. Your soul is stained. You fight for evil. You fight the Will. Do you see? No hope because it's wrong. Not your fault, not your fault, ssshhh. Born this way, we all are, born from cesspits of darkness only to crawl into the daylight, leaking blood and oil and covering all existence with our perversions, our iniquities." He removed his hand and rocked back on his heels, sighing heavily as he did so. That sigh reverberated through Tama's augmented hearing, communicating the sheer weariness, the sadness, and ultimately the resolve the Iktotchi felt. "Foolish Tama. Misguided, treacherous. False. Mustn't guard what is familiar just because it's always been with you. You were meant to change, to become light, to be freed of your inner darkness. It's why we are here, why I came, why I serve after so long. It isn't Right; you're not Right." He leaned closer, and his tone became more insistent, more frenzied. "Your fight is over, over, over again. So many before you, so many saved, so many many many freed from sins, Right with the Universe. It's old, we are and the job is, but must be done as long as those are born, as long as they reach the proper ages. As long as accountable to the hidden darkness, to the Wrong." His hand flashed forward again, his gentle touch long gone as he gripped her chin and pulled her head roughly forward, so that his other hand could grip her shoulder like a vice. "You've struggled enough, Tama. Fight no longer. Be at peace. I will stay with you till the end. I will take that darkness, the shadow that haunts your every breath, and I will save you from those iniquities. Finally, you will be free, and all will be Right again."

Tama opened her mouth to respond, to say something, to even utter a scream or a whimper, but no sound came from her as his hands gripped tighter. The Force came to bear upon her, warping about her and the darksider holding her in place. She felt the Savior's presence spreading out from his physical form, and she was suddenly aware of every sensory perception of him, the sour taste of his ragged breath, the clammy sweat upon his fingers, the overwhelming stench of unwashed bodies. Tama reached for the Force herself, but the Iktotchi's essence was too overwhelming, hammering down upon her like a blast door preventing her from expanding her consciousness and activating her connection to the Force. It was everywhere around her, but he made it impossible for her access her connection. She could feel something fundamental inside her beginning to unravel, the very fabric that stitched her being together coming apart at the Iktotchi's pervasive influence. Her mind began to devolve into primal screams of fear as she realized that the Savior's presence was enveloping her own; no longer was it just blocking her connection to the Force, but was drawing upon everything she was, the very core of her existence, and pulling her into itself. Like Ossa, Fenn, and Cyran before her, the Savior meant to consume her through the Force, to drain her until she existed no longer. Tama felt a brief flicker of despair amongst her abject fear and the unraveling of her mental capacity as she realized that this was her death, that despite all she had struggled for and against, she would still become sustenance for her captor's boundless insanity.

She barely registered the feeling of the Savior's hands upon her, and only when they left her form unexpectedly. She felt herself fall back in the mold and mud, her vision swimming in and out of focus, the jungle seeming to dance through her sight as she tried to gather her scattered thoughts. The cacophony of blasterfire assaulted her ears, followed by a snarl of rage and pain that rippled through the Force, like the scream they had heard when the ray shields had been brought down, but with far less destructive metaphysical presence. She turned upon her side, trying to peer through the haze within her mind, seeing the gangly, dark shape of the Savior as he staggered and darted forward, his arms flailing in front of him. Flashes of scarlet light flared all about him, casting his form in a garish silhouette as he raged toward another figure, one shifting through the shadows of the forest, but appearing more clearly the longer Tama watched. Recognition sparked in her mind as that figure rushed through a patch of light, a lance of thermal energy that illuminated the figure, one covered in mud, blood, and bits of fungi, gripping a blaster rifle in her narrow fingers as she triggered a storm of lasers in fury. Tama caught only a flash of the figure's features, but her heart skipped a beat as she recognized the fierce expression, the piercing eyes, the narrow features. It was her sister. It was Foyi.

* * *

Foyi paused in her heedless flight through the forest, attempting to gain an idea of where she was in relation to the distant echoes of her sister's essence in the Force. She was halted in place, attempting to reacquire the traces of Tama, when she heard the first screams, the wails of a girl as something truly horrendous occurred to her. Foyi did not recognize the owner of those vociferations, and on a fundamental level, she knew that they did not belong to her sister. And yet she continued her sprint, putting all the Force behind her like a tidal wave of energy speeding her along, as though Tama were the one in mortal danger. For if she was not at the moment, she most assuredly would be soon.

The jungle flew past her, but she barely registered its presence, following the growing feelings of familiarity, the currents in the Force created by her sister. Foyi emerged into a copse of tangled mushrooms as multiple presences in the Force shown like beacons within the waves of her mind, and her darting eyes took in the scene before her, one of death, of violence and perversion. Several meters from her a small, gangly figure struggled in the underbrush, whimpering from the pain of a wound she could not see. Beside the stump of a fungal stalk lay a frail, skeletal figure that might have once been a young Duros, but the emaciated remains of the unfortunate being were difficult to identify beyond a rough approximation of its species. A Zabrak girl lay at the base of another mushroom, her hands blistered and smoldering, her eyes closed and her mouth hanging open, lost within the oblivion of unconsciousness. Another unconscious girl sprawled before a mushroom nearby, bleeding from her hip and only beginning to stir as Foyi approached. And to the side, mere meters from her, knelt Tama, a pale wisp of what she had been before, her eyes locked open in horror, her body shivering as the Dark Side clustered like thick, oily waves all about the small clearing, threatening to drown her with its viscosity. Those waves emanated from a man she did not recognize, but one she instantly identified as her sworn enemy, an Iktotchi man crouched before Tama, his hands gripped upon her willowy frame like an energy spider to its intoxicating webs. And she could feel the Force in the man, a twisted version of it that exuded currents of agony, despair, rage, and suffering. Those waves were curling back in on themselves, lapping at the being of Tama and pulling more and more of her into himself. He was draining her, destroying all that she was to feed himself, and she was dying at his feet.

Foyi surged forward in a sprint again, a wordless cry of denial, of fear, of abject rage erupting from her throat, her finger squeezing reflexively upon the trigger of her blaster rifle. The Iktotchi man spun toward her in surprise and anger of his own, only to be thrown to the side when one of her blaster bolts clipped his left horn. He gave a scream nearly as tortured as the ones she had heard before, but it was not born of pain as it was of surprise, frustration, and incurable rage. The scream rippled through the Force, and Foyi dropped to her knees at the strength of the waves assaulting her, so loud and powerful she feared her eardrums would burst at the sound. But she gritted her teeth and shoved those waves away from her, drawing the Force within herself, allowing it to fill her like an empty basin, and sprang to her feet again. She saw the Iktotchi rising to his feet himself, swaying uncertainly as he brought a hand to his injured horn, his manic eyes blinking rapidly to clear the confusion born of having his head nearly blown from his shoulders. He looked toward her in time to see her rushing him, her blaster spitting more fire. His palms came up, catching one bolt and seemingly drinking it in, absorbing its energy even as his other hand bisected another laser blast and reflected it up through the canopy above, showering them both with ichor bled from an injured mushroom cap. Foyi fired again and rolled to avoid her bolts deflected directly back at her, but as she came up on one knee, she felt a tendril of the Force reach out and seize the end of her A295, ripping it brutally from her hands.

Foyi let it go, drawing upon her anger to sharpen her focus and prepare for the dive into the depths of the Force she must muster. Two could play at that game. Even as the blaster rifle spun through the air, cartwheeling end over end toward the Iktotchi Force-user, Foyi reached out and grabbed its other end telekinetically, arresting its twirl so that the blaster suddenly pointed directly at the Iktotchi, though it still hovered in midair a few meters from him. The Shepherd gave a cry of surprise as Foyi reached out with her free hand and crooked her index finger, mimicking the application of the Force that would remotely pull the blaster's trigger. The blaster rifle, still set to full autofire, unleashed a salvo of energy as the Iktotchi released his telekinetic hold on it and tried to dive to the side. His quick thinking and supernatural reactions saved him from taking the full brunt of the onslaught, but two blaster bolts burrowed through the fleshy part of his side, and he gave a scream as he tucked into an awkward roll and disappeared around the wide bole of a mushroom.

Foyi made a grasping motion with her hand and her blaster rifle leapt back into her grasp. Almost every fiber of her being urged her to rush to Tama's side, to determine the cause of the way her essence continued to flicker and wane. But she could also feel the presence of the Iktotchi as he scrambled out of sight, how he was attempting to hide in the Force from her metaphysical regard. If she did not deal with him now, he would take the first opportunity to kill both her and Tama. He could not survive if they were to continue living.

Foyi rounded the perimeter of the mushroom, assuming the Shepherd was already meters away, fleeing through the jungle. Instead, he had been lying in wait, apparently unconcerned with the ragged, bleeding wounds in his side, leaping upon her with a snarl. Foyi tried to bring her weapon to bear, but his hands gripped the barrel and chamber of the rifle and shoved it forward and up, the scope of the weapon contacting her chin and slamming her mouth shut. She felt blood explode in her mouth as her teeth clipped the end of her tongue, struggling with the Shepherd for control of the blaster. The Iktotchi's wild, determined eyes floated through her gaze, his breath rasping in grunts and sickly gasps as he pushed her back against the mushroom's trunk. His knee came up in a vicious jab to her ribs, and she gasped, spitting the blood pooling in her mouth across his eyes. He snarled in frustration and called strength from the Force to his limbs, ripping the blaster to the side and carrying her with it. Foyi, still choking for breath from the strike to her ribs, lost hold of the weapon and tumbled through the mud. Her grasping fingers and tumbling body ripped the blaster from the man's hands as well, and the weapon tumbled out of sight in the forest as Foyi attempted to slow her momentum. She somersaulted backward, ignoring her lungs' pleas for air, and came up into another fighting crouch, to see the Shepherd had already darted across to the other side of the mushroom, putting the trunk between himself and her. Foyi scurried to the side, using her hands as much as her knees, trying to keep him in sight; she rounded the mushroom stalk in time to see the Shepherd reaching out across the clearing. Currents of the Force rippled through the air, and an electrostaff leapt seemingly of its own accord from the underbrush a couple meters from Tama's prone form. The weapon spun end over end and slapped into the Iktotchi's palm, and purple veins of electricity arced over the transparisteel ends. A warcry escaped his lips as he called upon speed and power only the Force could provide, and closed to striking distance within seconds. Foyi twisted her body to the side as the Iktotchi tried to stab her with the sparking end of the polearm, which gave her the opportunity to grip the haft of the weapon and stop him from pulling it back. She twisted the electrostaff in her grip and whipped it to the side, pulling it free of the Iktotchi's hands. She twirled about on her heel and whirled the staff weapon around her body, bringing it to bear on the Shepherd, but he caught her off balance when he pulled on her in the Force just as she took his weapon. Too late she realized that he had never intended to land a hit on her with the electrostaff; he had merely offered a diversion for her that she could not pass up. Before she knew it, the man's hands had seized about her throat, and his knee came up again into the same spot in her ribs, eliciting such a torrent of pain through her body she could barely think, much less breathe. His presence within the Force became like a maelstrom of energy, the Dark Side washing over her, drowning her soul and cutting off her energy in the same way her breath had been denied her by the savage attacks to her midsection. She barely felt the electrostaff drop from her clenched fist as her knees hit the mud; the Shepherd lowered himself with her, keeping their gazes locked. While initially she had seen anger and uncontrollable rage twisting his features into a mask of hate, his countenance had changed completely upon immobilizing her in his grasp. Now, as Foyi's vision began to blur and she struggled weakly in his clutches, she saw only hunger in his face.

Darkness began to close in on her vision, her brain and lungs starving for oxygen, her _lekku_ quivering and wriggling about her shoulders. The Shepherd's hateful, ravenous face was all she could see through blurry, amorphous sight. His voice filtered through the sound of her heart thundering in her ears, a hoarse croak that slid like poptree syrup off the end of his tongue. "Too old, too old, yes you are. Lost to darkness, sinking in sin, dying without realization, fighting hardest for the evil which you harbor. And _such_ evil it is, buried deep, evil so evil, so dark it reeks in our nostrils, it slides beneath the stars. You can't hide it from us anymore. The Universe demands it drawn, the poison sucked from the festering wound. It will be swallowed, destroyed forever, lost to all. And you will be no more."

As the Shepherd's disturbing rambles wriggled like kouhuns in her mind, they rooted out and dredged up memories, recollections of past events from the very beginnings of her memory and even beyond, to information recorded in her brain so long ago she could no longer regularly recall them. Angry words she had shouted at her parents for not allowing her to create a discblade when she was not yet ready. A filthy epithet she had levered her sister's direction when an argument had become intensely personal and out of control. Lido lying in a pool of the same blood that smeared her hands. Ak-vir Vri gasping on the floor of a refresher as her telekinetic grasp massaged his heart and lungs. Every fear, every action she felt shame for, all dredged up from the depths of her consciousness in one writhing mass of scum from the bottom of the ocean that was her being. Even as pure agony rippled through her, she felt the Iktotchi's extreme satisfaction, which became relief as he found some revelation, some sense of peace, of vindication in the actions he had committed. He was committing. And as more such memories arose in her consciousness, always bringing more pain, she felt less and less like herself, as though something were eating her alive, and there was nothing she could do.

But then her world of pain and confusion was shattered by the sharp retort of a blaster. Her ears were filled with the Shepherd's scream, a vociferation of primal pain and profound disappointment, a sensation of failure that struck her like ice-cold waves of brine. His claw-like hands released her throat, and air whistled down her esophagus and through her sinuses, air that was thick with humidity and possessed of a sickly warmth, but it felt liberating nonetheless. She possessed enough strength left to roll away from the Iktotchi man as he writhed in the mud, reaching for a severe blaster burn along his left shoulder blade, flinging dirty water and thick blood in his agonized throes. Foyi heaved and gasped, one hand gripping the bruised parts of her ribs, scuttling away from him on one hand and her knees. She looked up to see Vaevi entering the small clearing, her eyes only for the Iktotchi man convulsing and gasping on the ground. She limped across the uneven ground, but it did nothing to halt the determination in her gait; she carried her C-10 Heavy Blaster Pistol in her right hand, lowered to her side, the end of the barrel faintly glowing with the heat of the energy it had just discharged. But it was her gaze that was the deadly part of her, promising mortal peril to any and all who dared to stand in her way. The pure, unadulterated hatred in that regard was marred only by tears that brimmed upon her lower eyelids, occasionally gathering enough liquid to slip down her cheeks and drip off the end of her chin.

The Shepherd's convulsing form flipped him over on his uninjured side, where he lay gasping and muttering incoherently to himself. His eyes rolled wildly about in his head, whereupon they alit on the sight of Vaevi stalking toward him. All his struggles ceased immediately, and his gaze widened in a mixture of alarm and disbelief, as though he were seeing a ghost that enraptured him. Vaevi's stride took her to within a meter of the Iktotchi, and she stood calmly there, though it appeared as though a light breeze would knock her prone. Her gaze had not wavered, but her lips began to quiver, and her voice emerged as little more than a squeak so soft, it could barely be heard. "Arctan. Why?"

The Iktotchi man met her gaze, but his own changed little. His lips flapped wordlessly for a lengthy moment, and the voice that emerged from his throat was barely coherent. "It had to be done. They were of age. They knew. I had to help them; I had to save them. And now they're free. Free free free! Freer than you or me, Vaevi!" His voice began to speed up, stumbling over words in his rising excitement. "We can join them, Vaevi, our love. Join them! Be free free _free!_ "

Vaevi's hand rose, and with it, her blaster pistol. There was a retort that echoed again, and the blaster bolt scythed through the center of Arctan's thin chest, slamming his body to the mud. The Iktotchi man gave a gasp that sounded more confused than pained, and Vaevi mercilessly shot him again, putting another hole through that heaving chest. Then she fired again. And again, until she was rapidly filling his corpse with more energy, splattering her shadowsuit with her former husband's blood, the bolts burrowing so deep they separated his spine and exploded in the mud below. Only when there was a gaping, smoldering crater through the center of the Iktotchi's body did she stop.

Foyi's attention was drawn to the sound of running footsteps, and Rayf sprinted into the clearing, his lightsaber swinging in his hand as he turned about looking for enemies, the crimson blade casting garish illumination that competed with the spears of sunlight and the glimmering stripes of phosphorescence. He glanced about the clearing, saw her struggling to get up, and ran to her side, his lightsaber switching off and at his belt with a blur of his hand. He gently grabbed her shoulders and helped her to stand, asking questions regarding her health, but Foyi did not even hear them. Her gaze was transfixed on a sight past Vaevi, who still stood over the man she had once known and loved, and deigned to execute. Foyi had eyes only for Tama, who was similarly lying in the mud, though she was still moving and gasping, attempting to stand. As soon as Rayf had helped her back to her feet, Foyi was already running, running around the corpse and the Iktotchi bounty hunter, then dropping into a slide and practically bowling her sister over, catching her up in a fierce embrace. She tried to say something past the emotion wedged in her throat, but all that emerged was incoherent blubbering, and finally great sobs that wracked her frame, shaking the frail and emaciated Tama with her. Foyi did not know how long she wept, only that she did until she could no longer breathe, and her ribs hurt so much that pain and the primal need to gulp air caused her tears to cease.

Foyi looked down at the Twi'lek girl in her arms, her last flesh and blood, pressed so tightly to her chest the girl was having difficulty breathing herself. Tama's horrid circumstances had made her almost unrecognizable, her face reduced to little more than a grinning skull, her eyes sunken and hollow, her _lekku_ hanging limply over her bony shoulders. But somewhere in those dark eyes was that same glimmer of life, that unrelenting energy and zest for life, that she knew so well in her sister. And when Tama met her gaze, her thin, chapped lips managed a pained smile. "Foyim'buma. You're here."

Foyi had to collect herself, lest she devolve into further sobs. "Of course I am. Where else would I be?" She sniffed hard, swiping a hand at her leaking eyes and nose. "I'd find you anywhere you went. And now I'm never letting you go."

Tama's face twisted into a grimace. "Never? I'm going to have to eat and piss sometime."

Foyi could not stop her laughter, which prompted Tama's chuckling. She sniggered for only a moment though before her laughter became deep sobs that shook her delicate frame, sobs that became wails of relief and anguish all mixed together. Foyi could no longer hold her own tears, and began weeping again. The two reunited sisters clutched each other close and simply wept into each the other's shoulders. Rayf watched them for a moment, then began to rush about, waking the other children enough to determine whether they were seriously injured or not, and then proceeding to the wounded Rodian with bacta patches.

But Vaevi dropped to her knees, her blaster discarded in the mud beside her, and simply gazed down at the mutilated corpse stretched out before her, silent tears continuing to stream down her face.


	33. Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Inquisitor Vinaq rolled her shoulders to stretch the taut muscles refusing to loosen as she walked up the grimy stairs to the level, rusted top of the landing platform. The sultry Felucian wind stirred what few hairs had come loose of the severe knot she had pulled back to the base of her neck, while the folds of her new and neatly-pressed maroon robes flapped about her thin, armored body, as though the heavy zeyd-cloth were attempting to take flight, whether she remained attached to them or not. She carried no weapons on her person; with the Force, she had all the weaponry she could ever need, though she certainly missed the familiar weight of her lightsaber riding her hip. It was a situation that would be remedied as soon as she returned to Imperial Center and requisitioned the necessary materials to create a new lightsaber, but it discomfited her nonetheless.

As Vinaq strode up the clanging stairs, streaks of pain shivered through her limbs and her body, pain that she either ignored or simply drew upon to enhance her own Force potential. The duel atop the precipice with the unexpected specter of her past had not gone in her favor, though she counted her continued survival as a blessing, one she did not deserve. She had been sloppy, overconfident; she had not deigned to treat her enemies as true threats, and had nearly suffered the ultimate price for that oversight. And as a result, she had little to show for results of her mission other than the continuing existence of herself, an existence that may be cut short abruptly depending on how the impending meeting she walked toward would fare.

She reached one of the landings of those stairs and paused a moment as a sudden spike of pain arced along her spine, igniting every healing bruise and laceration within her torso. Her injuries had been many but ultimately minor, suffered more from her brief scuffle with the former human Jedi and his Force-sensitive Twi'lek companion than the fall from the clifftop that occurred afterward. The Force had made certain her fall into the jungle had not been disastrous, though she had still hit the canopies with more speed than she had intended, and been forced to limp through kilometers of hostile foliage and wildlife, the blood leaking from her wounds attracting predators to doggedly haunt her steps. Occasionally, she had had to hold her ground and deter those predators bold enough to attempt to take her down, though after electrocuting or utterly destroying the bravest of these creatures with her violent command of the Dark Side, she had been left alone for the remaining duration of her trek. The ruins of Kway Teow had arisen in her vision almost a day later, and she had stumbled back into the perimeters of the Imperial garrison kept there as night of that following day fell. The Lieutenant and the remainder of his stormtroopers had been almost relieved to see her continuing to draw breath. Vinaq assumed the officer was more concerned with what repercussions might befall him for losing a superior in the jungle than whether she lived or not. She had allowed her wounds to be treated with the company's most basic medical supplies, but had refused any bacta remedies. She wanted to feel the continuing pain of her injuries as her body slowly knit itself back together, the silver streaks of agony that coursed through her frame whenever she moved too quickly, or ignored the limitations her injured form placed upon her. To her, the discomfort and anguish of her persistent wounds was only another source of power, the pain granting her a focus and a red wash of simmering anger that steeped her in the Dark Side. Having survived the trials of this corrupted world, she had gained a new understanding of it, a deeper connection to its lurking darkness. She felt stronger than she had upon landing on this planet, which only increased her anger whenever she considered the face of the man she had known as Thame Mirac and his Force-sensitive friend. Vinaq had come here looking for Force-sensitives to bolster the ranks of darksiders within the New Order, to create new Inquisitors and Adepts to increase the influence of the Emperor. Vinaq had arrived here expecting to find such potential allies and tools of the Empire amongst the mysterious and powerful Jungle Felucians, and though there were still two prisoners in the base kept specifically for that purpose, she had also discovered unexpected wielders of the Force, with proper, regimented training and dangerous skill. To have been bested by them was not a part of her report she relished giving; she could only hope that the prisoners she had obtained for the Inquisitorius' use would suffice.

Vinaq crested the top of the stairs, striding onto the slippery surface of the landing pad. The Lieutenant and a cadre of stormtroopers were already arrayed and waiting in the morning sun peeking through the haze in the atmosphere and the few dark rainclouds that lumbered along the horizon. The wind up here had been stirred into a sweltering gale by the _Lambda_ -class T-4a Shuttle lowering itself upon the platform, beside the nearly-identical _Rimfire_ Vinaq had been transported in. Vinaq walked across the platform to stand beside and just to the front of the lieutenant as the shuttle's landing pads touched the grimy surface, and the ship settled, steam hissing as its engines powered down. She coaxed her expression into one neutral, counting upon the protective field projected by her Taozin amulet to mask her emotional turmoil in the Force.

The shuttle's boarding ramp lowered with a whine of servomotors, and the metal of the ramp rang with a single set of boots, the sound elicited by that stride profoundly imperious. Those shining, black boots belonged to a man similarly clothed in attire as black as the void of space, though accoutrements of his garments were a sanguine red only a shade lighter than the color of the robes Vinaq herself wore. He wore a tunic of glossy black cloth over a pair of dark trousers, while scarlet pauldrons secured to his shoulders a cloak of similar shade, save for the scarlet sigils embroidered along the hem of the cape, symbols Vinaq suspected were Sith in origin. To most of the uninitiated amongst the Empire's heirarchy, the man striding toward her would be mistaken for a human, with a squared jaw, severe countenance that reminded her uncomfortably like a leering hawkbat, and a strong forehead rising to a bald pate, save for the fringe of hair about the nape of his neck. At each corner of his mouth draped jagged tattoos stitched down to his chin, and where his eyes should have been was a strip of vacuous black cloth, perpetrating the facade that he had once possessed eyes that could no longer see. The truth was far stranger, and more menacing, for this man belonged to the Miraluka, a rare species of near-humans born without eye sockets, but with a unique connection to the Force that allowed them to compensate. The man reached the bottom of the ramp and paused, his head swiveling back and forth, as though he were busying himself with inspecting the troops arrayed before him. Vinaq kept her expression neutral; she dared not show any overt emotion before this man, for despite his lack of eyes, he could perceive far more than those who possessed sight. Hiding within the sphere of void that her Taozin amulet produced, she allowed herself to sample the man's Force presence, and came away feeling violated, as she always did. She did not understand his connection to the Force, for it was unlike anyone's she had encountered before. He was wreathed in a miasma of black whorls, interspersed with tendrils of scarlet, gold, and orange that grasped for her extrasensory perceptions. The tumultuous black cloud of ink that was his existence followed those tendrils, boiling out like a silent wave of death, seeking to smother her own connection to the Force, to snuff out the light of her existence by his mere presence alone. It sent shivers of both revulsion and hunger through her as his invisible regard fell upon her; revulsion for the way the colors of his presence attempted to violate the sanctity of her own, and hunger for the levels of power in the Dark Side he had achieved. Power she yet strove for, assuming she survived this meeting.

The man stepped closer, and metal glinted in the sun along his hip, inexorably drawing Vinaq's eyes to the only visible weapon he carried upon his person, an ostentatious and forbidding ceremonial piece he was still quite capable of wielding with lethal skill. He carried a Jengardin Double-Bladed Vibroblade upon his hip, an accoutrement to his dark visage meant as a threat display to his subordinates. Vinaq knew him to possess a lightsaber as well, with a synthetic crystal as scarlet as her own, though he rarely carried it, and when he did, he tended to keep it hidden upon his person. Despite attitudes and proclivities amongst other members of the Inquisitorius, High Inquisitor Jerec preferred to disguise his Force abilities, which only served to make his apparently supernatural ability to see more mysterious for those unaware of his sensitivity to the Force.

Jerec stopped in front of Vinaq, and she dipped her head in a curt and proper bow. "High Inquisitor. Welcome to Felucia."

"You have results that would interest me," he all but snarled in response. In all the time Vinaq had known him, she had never heard Jerec give a greeting; he was always more concerned with the point at hand, and getting to it as quickly as possible. And the way he had answered her greeting had not been phrased as a question, but rather a demand, an unspoken order to impress him or suffer the consequences.

"I have found two likely candidates for conditioning and training in the Emperor's service," she replied, keeping her voice even and deferential. "They are Force-sensitive indigenous. Powerful, but raw and untrained. I have taken the liberty of beginning their training with an...object lesson to make them more submissive. They shall be easy to mold into whatever capacity the Empire may require of them."

The hint of a smirk graced Jerec's lips. "Are they 'fresher-trained?"

Vinaq allowed a sardonic smile of her own. "Honestly, m'lord, I haven't checked, and they are not active conversationalists."

Jerec strode past her, walking directly through the center of the line of stormtroopers arrayed before him, forcing them to shift to the sides to provide him room. Vinaq pivoted on her heel and followed directly in his wake as he began to pound down the stairs which descended into the Imperial base. She heard the lieutenant give sharp orders, and he and his troops followed the pair of Inquisitors at a respectful distance. "Perhaps you are simply not an engaging conversationalist, Inquisitor," came Jerec's response as his purposeful and swift gait carried him further down the staris.

"You know that to be false, High Inquisitor," Vinaq replied coyly. In truth, Vinaq and Jerec had known each other from a time before the Inquisitorius and the Empire, when she had merely been an Apprentice, and he a Master, of the Order they had both turned their backs upon. Since then, they had been associated with each other on multiple occasions, occasionally working together on various missions and hunts on the business of the Inquisitorius, and had thus formed a respect for each others abilities and methods, a relationship both strove to use for their own benefits. Vinaq had heard rumors from multiple sources that Jerec preferred to cultivate Force-sensitives he was personally involved in the training of into his own lackeys, drawing upon their strength while ensuring their loyalty to himself over that of the Emperor and the New Order. Some of those rumors suggested that Jerec had designs on ruling the Empire himself, a possibility Vinaq would not put past him, for he possessed insatiable ambition and a hunger for power, influence, and superiority matched only by his thirst for knowledge. It was one of the reasons that Jerec had chosen to work on the relationship they had built, and was likely the reason he had unexpectedly jumped into the system to assess her progress on the mission granted her by the Inquisitorius. Vinaq knew she was being evaluated, not only for her aforementioned progress, but also for her suitability as a candidate for the troupe of darksiders with whom he was surrounding himself, and it was a potential outcome she had considered every time she had spoken with Jerec. The potential to ally herself with such a powerful practitioner of the Force, well-versed in the arts of both the Jedi and the ancient Sith and knowledgeable in almost everything pertaining to the energy field that bound the galaxy together, was an opportunity she could not ignore. Though she outwardly expressed unwavering loyalty to the Empire and its ruler's vision for the security of the galaxy's future, Vinaq had found the forbidden powers and knowledge of the Dark Side tantalizing, and constantly searched for new capabilities, as well as the improvement of the fearsome powers she already possessed. Jerec was a means to an end for her, as much as she could be a tool to the High Inquisitor's own ambitions, though neither had committed to the other in any overt capacity.

Vinaq quickened her pace half a step as they descended the stairs, bringing her to Jerec's left side and keeping her stride abreast of his. "Your arrival is as unexpected as it is fortuitous, High Inquisitor. You're a long way from Sulon."

Jerec's expression did not change as he stared straight ahead without any eyes, though he waved a gloved hand dismissively. "I have other matters to look after beyond the scope of my recent governorship. Including those presumably under the care of your capabilities, which have been found lacking, based on the wounds that still pain you."

Vinaq shifted uncomfortably as the reminder of her injuries sent shivers of pain along her torso. "I admit that we...I have encountered unexpected difficulties since arriving on this world. I came into contact with Force-users I had not anticipated, and circumstances arose that forced me to withdraw."

"These Force-users," Jerec hissed dangerously. "You failed to detain them."

"I did," Vinaq was loathe to admit. "Though I was successful in identifying at least one of the individuals, a human man I knew as a child, a failed Initiate of the Jedi. He possessed a subtle but powerful command of the Force, and unparalleled skill with an exotic melee weapon I have only seen in recordings and archives. I believe he was of the Matukai. With him was a Twi'lek girl, who showed great proficiency with telekinesis, and used a circular blade as both a projectile and close-quarters weapon. I don't know where she got her training or skills, but she may have been stronger in the Force than even the man was, and was well-versed in its use."

Jerec was quiet for a moment, the hue of his presence changing to a lighter tone as he contemplated her words. "Matukai," he hissed. "And Zeison Sha." As they entered the base on their way to visit the Felucian prisoners, he turned to her, piercing her soul with the eyes that should have been present behind the grotesque strip of cloth. "I deem your failure an acceptable one, Inquisitor, assuming you can provide information to support your claims. Tell me more about these...Force-users. I want to learn everything you know about them."

Vinaq's brow rose almost imperceptibly. "They could be of great use to the Empire if they were to be located and turned."

"They could be of great use," Jerec agreed, notably leaving out any mention of the government they both served in name only. A smile creased his thin, cold lips, and Vinaq could not help but share it.

* * *

Foyi perched on the edge of her seat in the _Flamusfracta_ 's lounge, only just realizing after a few moments that she was staring quite intently at the Twi'lek who sat across the table from her. The small room in Rayf's ship had become considerably more crowded than it normally did, leaving little space for anyone gathered to move about, especially for the captain of the vessel, who was frantically running back and forth from the food synthesizer to the table, serving dishes of shipboard rations to the new occupants and their ravenous appetites. It was almost too much to keep abreast of, and for many others, it could have been perceived as a stressful task. But Foyi could practically feel the physical presence of Rayf's grin, his happiness and satisfaction palpable ripples through the Force. She snuck a glance at him as he plopped a platter of mugs wafting steam from the hot caf contained within, and she accepted a mug he personally offered her with a grin of her own.

Foyi returned her attention to those gathered at the table, the group of children that had managed to survive, through force of will and the Force's will together. There was a Togruta girl named Ashla, who had the ghost of a smile on her face as she carefully placed warm food in her mouth, though her hunched shoulders and quivering headtresses suggested she was still apprehensive. Beside her sat Farr, the Rodian boy who ate with wild abandon, and had expressed his appreciation multiple times around a mouth filled with food. The Zabrak girl was named Nuri, and her spirits seemed to have improved greatly from the grim expression she had first greeted Foyi with, offering an occasional joke in between bites of her meal. She sat close to Tama, who had said little during the meal, but for the first time since they had left the cursed planet of Felucia behind, the light of her essence had begun to shine as bright as a distant star. She radiated waves of peace, of serenity born of being amongst people she felt comfortable and safe with. Her attention was on her Zabrak friend; the two girls had been nearly inseparable since being helped back to the ship. Foyi was not surprised, as the girls had survived so much together, mostly by relying on each others strengths, though she was secretly dismayed that Nuri appeared to have come from the same cut of cloth as spacers such as Rayf and Pash, and cursing far too often and colorfully for Foyi's tastes. But Foyi barely knew her, or any of the other children who had been subjected to the Shepherd's insanity, so she was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. They were not deserving of her suspicion. Not after all they had been through.

After finding Tama and the other survivors in the jungle and the death of the Shepherd at Vaevi's hands, Foyi, Rayf, and a nearly insensate Vaevi had endeavored to return to the _Flamusfracta_ in an arduous and lengthy trek through the jungle. The bounty hunter's tracking skills, their incomplete orbital survey maps, and pure luck allowed them to find the old Separatist platform upon which they had left the Firespray-31. Once there, they had spent many hours treating the large variety of wounds they had all suffered; Farr had been in the worst shape due to his blaster burns, but a generous amount of bacta patches and medpacs had put him well on the road to a full recovery. Rayf offered the opinion that they should all have the benefit of full immersion in bacta, though his ship was not equipped with such a facility, and considering their recent entanglements with Imperial forces, they were wary of stopping at a spaceport with such capabilities, as the Empire's nearly complete control over bacta production and distribution throughout the galaxy necessitated some form of Imperial oversight at such places. Foyi had also offered her own strength and capabilities in the Force to heal some minor injuries. She was well-practiced in Force trances and the healing, meditative states they provided, but knitting the injured tissues of others had proved to be a relatively difficult challenge for her. It was a challenge she had willingly arisen to, with some small measure of success. As such, the worst of the physical wounds the group had suffered had been treated properly, and everyone was on their way to complete and speedy recoveries.

The emotional, spiritual, and psychological injuries, however, would take far longer to heal. Even as Foyi stared at her sister in appreciation of her continued survival, she could not disguise the grimace that creased her face. Tama hid it well, but she could feel the roiling cauldron of darkness and raw emotion that trembled at her sister's core; every once in awhile, her attentiveness would slip, and ripples of that tempest would permeate her being. There was a similar storm at the center of each of the children, born of the the horrors they had been subjected to in the Shepherd's violent and perverse care, experiences they had spoken as little as possible about. Foyi and Rayf had not pried at all, focusing instead on treating their injuries and slowly reintroducing their malnourished bodies back to food and drink. Foyi could feel the pain of welling emotion in her breast whenever she looked at the Twi'lek across the table from her. Tama was a fragile, hollow shell of her former self. She had been a thin, wiry girl on Yanibar, prompted by their meager meals and the rapid changes her body had undertaken due to her growing, maturing physicality. She had been of a healthy weight and physique when she had been kidnapped, and now she appeared little more than a skeleton barely able to hold herself upright, much less bend her stiff and protruding joints, her papery skin held taut over those same bones. Her eyes had sank beneath her brow, leaving hollow sockets and dark smudges around the orbs. Her _lekku_ hung like atrophied appendages down her protruding spine, barely twitching at all in the subconscious somatic language unique to the Twi'lek species. She brought her own mug of caf to her lips, and Foyi experienced a sudden, irrational fear that the jutting bones of her unnaturally thin wrists would give way under the weight of the filled cup. Tama glanced up from her meal to meet her sister's gaze and offered a tired smile, which appeared as the grin of a rictal skull on her emaciated features. "Hi."

"Hey yourself," Foyi echoed across the table, while Rayf finally found a moment to sit on the crash couch beside her with a cup of caf in his hand.

Nuri swallowed an enormous hunk of sweesonberry roll and turned to the human and Twi'lek sitting together, her countenance elated. "If we haven't thanked you enough, let me thank you again. For coming for us."

Ashla echoed her sentiment with a barely audible murmur, and Tama simply continued to smile warmly, while Farr messily consumed his meal. Rayf leaned forward after a hearty gulp of caf. "Truth be told, we were really coming for Tama, until we found out that creep had more than just her trapped on this planet. We were only too happy to help, and getting the chance to do so is thanks enough."

"When we leaving this _sleemo_ planet?" Farr managed around the majority of his meal.

Foyi gave the hatch on the far end of the room a significant look. "We're laying low for only a short while...we ran into some Imperial patrols while we were trying to find you, and we don't want to go blasting off and alerting their sensors so soon after that. And we need to get Vaevi back to her own ship when...when she's ready."

Tama looked over her shoulder as well, with a shadow passing over her features that Foyi could not begin to decipher. The children had already been introduced to the trio that had come to their rescue, and some minor details of the groups' respective journeys had thus been shared. Tama had been especially curious to understand why two strangers from entirely different circumstances had banded together with her distrusting sister to come to her aid. Foyi had seen the old hunger for excitement awaken in her eyes when she had discovered Vaevi Zshi was a bounty hunter, and it was obvious she had wanted to assail her with questions regarding her hunts and exploits. But it had been painfully obvious that Vaevi was not even remotely in the mood, and so Tama's curiosity had turned to a more receptive source, that of the unflappable Rayf Moors. He had already gotten around to explaining the basic tenets and philosophy on the Force held by the Matukai, as well as tales from the glory days of the Jedi Order and the horrors and heroism of the Clone Wars. She had been fascinated by the severed portions of his wan-shen, and was eager to see the weapon in use when it was repaired or remade. The stolen lightsaber had been an even greater visual and somatic treat for her, and she had looked upon both Rayf and Foyi, especially her sister, with a new sense of awe when he had related an account of the conflict with the Inquisitor Vinaq, exaggerating Foyi's contributions and downplaying the fact that they had barely survived the encounter. Foyi had no more protests against Rayf's insistence on flamboyant storytelling, and she could not deny the new look of wonder and admiration leveled her way by her sister as Rayf's tale came to a close. The other children had been equally interested in getting to know their true saviors, though both Ashla and Farr seemed skeptical of their sensitivity and capabilities with the Force, whether such abilities were to be cherished or feared. Foyi did not blame their attitude, considering what the man who had claimed to be "their Savior" had been and what he had done. Nuri, on the other hand, seemed quite enamored with the concept of the Force and the abilities of those who utilized it. Though she ultimately seemed glad that she was still alive and in good company than anything else.

Tama looked back to her sister, concern etched into her features. "Is...is she going to be okay?"

Rayf's expression grew troubled as Foyi looked down at her cup. "I don't know. Maybe. Eventually. With time."

"The same could probably be said for all of us," Nuri remarked in a tone of voice that was far too wise and elderly for someone of her age.

"So...what happens...now?" Ashla muttered, finally looking up from her meal and giving Foyi a tentative look. It took the Zeison Sha Warrior a moment to realize everyone in the room was now looking to her. Her _lekku_ twitched in discomfort, and she hid behind her mug to allow herself a moment to think as she imbibed a mouthful of hot caf.

"We leave this planet," Rayf offered for her. "We find your families. Your homes. We bring you back to them."

"What about the others?" Nuri asked, making a wide gesture to indicate the exterior of the ship and the corrupted jungles beyond. "There were other children in those ruins. Many died, but there might be more of them still out there. The...'Shepherd' and his droids weren't the only threats out there."

"We'll search for them, of course," Foyi assured her. "We're not sure what ruins you were imprisoned in, but we'll try and find them and search them thoroughly."

"But you're not hopeful," came Nuri's cynical response.

Foyi looked down at her mug. "We barely found you. Had those droids not attacked you, had we not heard the blasterfire..." She glanced at her sister, who still seemed distracted by something else on her mind. "It sounds more like you were tracking us, anyway. With luck and the Force, we may yet find others still alive."

"Then we leave," Farr insisted again, swiping gangly fingers across his greasy snout. "We go home."

"We'll all go home," Foyi agreed. There were murmurs of agreement, of excitement even, as well as the clacking and clinking of utensils upon platters and dishes, from those who actually bothered with mealtime etiquette. Small talk began to resume amongst those who felt the need for camaraderie, but Tama stood from her seat on woozy legs, muttering something about needing to use the refresher, and left through the hatch. Foyi watched her go, feeling an urge to follow her, to keep her in sight at all possible moments. But she could feel it; Tama was a different person now, for better or worse. She was no longer the little girl who Foyi sometimes treated like her own child. Her crucible had reshaped her into a young woman, one who was damaged but still capable. Who could handle herself. If she required some time alone, then Foyi could not blame her. She glanced to her side to meet Rayf's gaze and offered him the ghost of a smile. He offered his hand, and she took it gladly, squeezing his calloused fingers and palms and letting the serenity he felt bleed through her own essence in the Force.

It would all be alright. Eventually. With time.

* * *

Tama kept one hand on the wall of the narrow corridor in the bowels of the _Flamusfracta_ , passing several rooms that looked uncomfortably like cells or compartments for the containment of prisoners. Though the majority of these rooms had been repurposed as cabins and storage spaces, the original design and the sensations they evoked sent shivers through her _lekku_ , and she moved past them as quickly as her tired legs could carry her. Her destination was not difficult to find, the cargo hold being the largest room she had seen on the ship, though she still felt an uneasy sense of claustrophobia leaning through its door and into the space beyond. The room was almost empty save for the Iktotchi bounty hunter sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, various weapons and devices arrayed in a semicircle before her, her E-11s Sniper Rifle balanced across her lap. She was focused on scrubbing mud and spores from the exterior of the weapon with a plastifibe agitator. She had dressed in new clothing that disguised the bacta patches plastered over her wounds like Tama and the other children, though her haggard appearance suggested she had yet to use the sanisteam as they had. Her expression hitched slightly as she noticed Tama's approach, but she gave no other acknowledgment.

Tama stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her clean her impressive arsenal. She had sought this woman out with a purpose, but now that she saw her, she did not know where to begin. "I...I was just wondering..." Tama paused for a moment, then tried again. "I wanted to know if there was anything I could do for you. Do you want some caf?"

"No," Vaevi replied in a hollow, sharp voice. "I'm fine."

Tama lingered in the doorway for an uncomfortable moment, attempting to find the words she wished to offer. She stepped into the hold and pressed her back to the wall, sliding her spine and posterior down the wall until she sat upon the cold floor. Her entire body was far too tired to simply stand around in one spot. "I wanted to thank you...for coming to our rescue."

"You should thank your sister. In these times, it's rare to see one so devoted to their family."

"Family is the most important thing in this galaxy," Tama agreed. "Foyi told me about yours, and I wanted to offer my...condolences."

Vaevi finally looked up, and her eyes had narrowed into a dangerous glare. "Look, kid. I'm glad you and the other younglings are alive, and I'm ecstatic that I could have a part in that. But I didn't ask for your sympathy or your caf. So if you don't mind, why don't you go spend more time with your sister and leave me alone?"

Tama had stared true terror and death in the face multiple times in the last week, so the vibroblades the bounty hunter was glaring her way gave her no qualms. "She told me how the S—he was your husband. How he killed the children you had together."

"He was a psychopath and a murderer; I shouldn't need to tell you that. The galaxy is a better place without him."

Tama nodded. "But you're not a better person now that you've killed him, are you? I mean, a _complete_ being. I saw you in that clearing. You wanted vengeance, yes, but you wanted answers more. Answers you can't get now that he's...gone."

Vaevi returned her gaze to the tools of her trade, but her hand had stalled in cleaning them, no longer focused on her task. "I don't need anything from you, girl. It's great that you're free and all, but why don't you spend that freedom elsewhere, away from me?"

Tama leaned forward, drawing her aching knees to her chest and resting her chin upon them. "I will, but not before I try my best to fill in some of the blanks in the data. You helped rescue me, whatever your reasons...whatever your motivations. You were there for me, whether that was your original intention or not, and so I'm here for you." She took a long, shuddering sigh as she reluctantly dredged up memories she was even now attempting to bury, memories that would never go away, would never rest peacefully unless she faced them directly. She looked up at the Iktotchi again, and could see the woman meeting her gaze, could feel her thoughts reaching out toward her own. Belatedly, Tama remembered that Iktotchi were said to be telepathic. The Twi'lek did not bother to hide her thoughts, wearing her memories openly. Perhaps, if Vaevi could catch glimpses of those memories, she would better understand the words that she felt she must relate. "The entire time we were...trapped in that place...I don't know how to describe it. It was a prison as much as it was a carnival of death. He spoke to us constantly through telepathy, but he was able to speak to all of us simultaneously, and with different messages; I think it was one of the ways he used the Force. I was too tired to understand his abilities at first, and only when it was almost too late did I sense his sensitivity to the Force. I think he drew on the Force almost constantly, the same way he fed on our emotions, like it was...food to him. I got the impression that he never learned to properly control his powers or his emotions, that they controlled him rather than the other way around. It's...hard to describe to someone not sensitive to it." She made a weak, indecipherable gesture with her hands, at a loss for words. "The Force...is so full of power, it can be easy to lose oneself in it. Especially for someone who goes through some traumatic experience. Strong emotions can overcome common sense and control, can lead to a slippery slope that falls into the Dark Side...and once there, it's hard to come back from that. He must have spent...years here. Years on this planet that's so out of balance. I can still feel the Dark Side...calling to me, even now..."

Vaevi narrowed her gaze again. "You don't sound so...balanced yourself."

"You can read my mind. You can _see_ what happened to me and the others. I challenge you to remain 'balanced' after all that," Tama snapped in response. Vaevi's expression closed, and Tama leaned back again, rubbing her forehead wearily. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be...like that. All I'm trying to do here is give you some idea of what might have been going through his mind during...all that happened. He had this twisted view of reality. He was convinced that we were born already tainted with some sort of sin, an 'inner darkness' that had to be cleansed, and the only way to do that was if that darkness was drawn out into the open for all to see. It's why he threw us all together under such harsh circumstances...why he tried to force us to fight monsters, droids, and each other for our very survival. In his mind, forcing us into extreme adversity would force out the darkness, would reveal our 'sins', and then he would feed off _our_ emotions by draining us. He must have thought he was using the Force to take that darkness into himself and destroy it, so that our souls would be purified and ready for...whatever comes next. After this life, I mean."

Vaevi's glare had softened, and in the darkness of her eyes were emerging tears, moisture that had yet to spill down their cheeks. Tama knew that even as the bounty hunter was listening to her, she was viewing the convoluted snatches of Tama's past that continued to swim through the forefront of her mind. She scrutinized Tama's malnourished frame. "You're...fourteen, right? Like...my daughter..."

Tama nodded slowly. "All the girls he had kidnapped were fourteen. And all the boys, twelve standard years. Just like your children. I don't know exactly why he insisted on kidnapping people of ages that mirrored your children. But...I think when he murdered them, that was the beginning of his insanity, and what eventually led to the killing that came later. I think, in his own mind, this was his way of justifying what he did to his children all those years ago. He convinced himself that all beings were naturally born with a hidden darkness, with sins that had not been atoned for, and became accountable at those ages. I don't think his damaged mind could reconcile his actions without creating for himself some role of cosmic importance and sacrifice." She turned away, barely able to continue speaking, but feeling as though she must. "He called us our 'Savior'. He deluded himself into thinking that by forcing us to become wild animals, selfish and without remorse, he could use the Force to drain away our darker natures and allow us to pass away in peace with ourselves and the Force."

Tama paused for a lengthy moment as Vaevi leaned back on her haunches, swiping angrily at the tears that were beginning to trace lines down her cheeks again. Tama, her own voice husky with emotion, forced herself to stand. "You know, when I was trapped...having to listen to his voice in my voice all the time...I _hated_ him. The Zeison Sha teach balance with oneself and the Force, that strong emotions can be useful when necessary, but should never be allowed to become so strong as to lose oneself to them. So hatred was something new to me, something that scared me even more than...he did. But then Foyi told me about you and him, about your children, and...I don't hate him anymore. I don't forgive him, and I won't forget what he did to me and so many others. All the death and pain he was responsible for. But I can't bring myself to hate him anymore. All I feel is...pity. Regret. He was unique in his own way, like any other sentient being, like any other presence in the Force. And a part of me...is sad that he's gone. That he had to die as such a broken shell of a man. That his abilities mastered him, instead of the other way around. That he was so out of balance with the Force, and died that way." She met Vaevi's wavering gaze. "I'm not telling you to forgive him either. I just don't want you to become as broken as he was by...what has occurred."

Vaevi wiped tears from her eyes again. "I'm not broken, girl."

Tama gave her a sad sigh, and in that moment, her features took on such an expression of wisdom and insight, she seemed to age decades in mere seconds. "We're all broken. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot. But things that are broken can be repaired. Given time and the right hydrospanner." She pointed down at a hydrospanner lying beside the bounty hunter's C-10 Heavy Blaster Pistol. "Give yourself time, Vaevi. Don't let what either you or he did destroy you, as it did him." Having nothing further to say, Tama let out a small gasp of exertion, of relief, and left through the open hatch, hobbling back toward the lounge. Leaving Vaevi to look down upon her tools and her weapons, her battered hands subconsciously reaching for the indicated hydrospanner and cradling in her lap beside the sniper rifle. She sniffed hard, then let herself devolve into sobs, weeping softly, alone in the empty cargo hold.

* * *

Vaevi left the _Flamusfracta_ a few hours after the Firespray flew a low course over the jungles of Felucia, skimming the upper edges of the fungal canopies as Rayf angled it toward the clearing where the bounty hunter's ship rested. On the way, Rayf followed the often contradictory and half-remembered directions supplied him by all the former prisoners in a rush of reluctant but flurried speech, leading them all on a course just above the jungle canopies, until the ruins of a former city came into view. Rayf and Vaevi compared the coordinates upon which the ruins sat with telemetry they had gathered of the planet's surface, and identified the remains of a city that had once been called Niango. They made several passes over the buildings, Rayf's cautious and expert piloting keeping them close to the lowest edifices as possible, weaving the Firespray in between sagging and carbon-scored skyscrapers when necessary. They made several passes through the city, and Tama even pointed out an old courtyard where a shield generator emplacement had been. Nuri was quick to jump in with a detailed description of the rancor that Tama had compelled through the Force and its wanton destruction of the Shepherd's droids and the ray shield generator. Farr also made exaggerated remarks regarding his own involvement in these escapades, and for once, Nuri did not angrily contradict him. Rayf scanned the area with the ship's sensor suites, and noted that it did seem to be a warzone.

But that was the most the sensors revealed. The remnants of the Clone Wars, of destruction, of death and despair. What life readings the starship sensed belonged to nonsentient beings, to animals both large and small. They were even able to identify a pair of boma, slinking through the alleys in search of the same small prey that the _Flamusfracta_ 's scans had already recorded. Foyi and Vaevi even disembarked and searched some more promising hiding spots by eyes and hands alone, but they found no more survivors. They searched the chosen regions well into the night, and all the two women found were bodies, some torn to partially-consumed shreds by predators, others displaying mortal wounds created by crude blades, blunt objects, or even low-powered blaster bolts. Eventually, neither Zeison Sha or bounty hunter could stomach anymore of the grim search, and gave the rest up for naught. They had already rescued what survivors they could.

Soon thereafter, they found themselves lowering in the clearing that held Vaevi's ship, a battered but functional YT-2000 Light Freighter resting upon a relatively stable and level bluff of stone that had been cleared almost entirely of mud, moss, and mushrooms. From the exterior, the starship showed little distinguishing features upon its beaten hull plating, the type of vessel that would not warrant a second glance if someone were to pass it by on a landing platform or docking bay on any of countless populated worlds. It was inconspicuous, which fit Vaevi's methods and philosophy of hunting bounties perfectly. The larger vessel almost completely occupied the bluff's level surface, so Rayf could not set the _Flamusfracta_ down in the clearing, but he was able to fly close enough to it he could maintain a hovering position within reach of the cliff edge, allowing Vaevi to stride down the off ramp of the Firespray and drop the half-meter to the ground. She landed in a crouch, wincing at the pain that still emanated from her injured leg, then straightened, slinging her pack and weapons over her back. She turned back to the ramp to look upon those who watched her go, her companions throughout the hardships and trials of Felucia. Foyi stood to one side of the ramp, while Rayf waited patiently across from her, having set the _Flamusfracta_ 's autopilot to standby mode.

"This is it, then," Vaevi remarked glumly, for lack of anything else pertinent to say.

Rayf gave a short, melodramatic bow. "It was a pleasure making your acquaintance, Vaevi Zshi. You can shoot rancors off my ass anytime."

Vaevi gave him a disbelieving grin. "Do you intend on encountering rancors often from here on out?"

"Emperor's black bones, I hope not."

"Vaevi, thank you," Foyi interjected, and the Iktotchi's gaze found her own. "You helped save my sister and all these children. Without you...I don't know that we would have been reunited."

Vaevi sighed and forced a smile. "It...was my pleasure."

"What will you do now?"

Vaevi rubbed her forehead in consternation. "Maybe...take some time off. I have a lot to think about. I'm not sure I'm in the right profession anymore...or, at least, my reasons for being what I am have changed. If nothing else like that changes, then I suppose...eventually, I'll get back to work."

"Well, if you _do_ go back to bounty hunting," Rayf replied, "I'm sure there's some sort of price on our heads now. We just so happened to anger a lot of powerful and vindictive people in the Outer Rim while we were trying to find the younglings, and we'd appreciate it if you would stay away from any contracts out for our heads."

Foyi held up a finger to indicate she meant to add to Rayf's point. "And if there's anything you could do to discourage others of your field from taking on said contracts, we'd appreciate it."

Vaevi's smile turned genuine, and she hefted the sniper rifle across her back. "I'll see what I can do." She turned to walk the short distance to her ship, triggering the boarding ramp as she approached.

"Don't be a stranger," Rayf called after her. A thought occurred to him, and he added, "Unless you get desperate for creds. Then, please, remain strange."

Vaevi turned to give him a sardonic smile over her shoulder. "I think you're overestimating the value of your head, Captain Moors. But I'll keep that in mind if the money's ever good on hunting the two of you down. If that happens, why don't you make some caf, and we can all sit down for a chat about removing your bounties?"

Foyi did not bother to suppress her smile. "May the Force be with you, Vaevi. And may it guide you to the peace and belonging you're looking for."

Vaevi only answered with a forlorn smile, then turned about and walked up her starship's loading ramp, disappearing from their sight within the confines of the vessel. Rayf turned to stride back into the _Flamusfracta_ , his steps hurried, for he had been concerned that the more adventurous and curious members of their passengers would attempt experiments with the control boards of his ship. Foyi lingered a moment longer, watching as the YT-2000's engines began to warm in their startup sequences, scattering fungal material in great washes of heat. Then Foyi walked back into the interior of the Firespray, making her way to the cockpit in order to strap into her crash restraints, to ride copilot on their next voyage through the stars.

* * *

The following days were spent in and out of hyperspace, the only pauses in their voyage necessitated by stops for refueling, or reaching the various destinations they had set for themselves. The children rescued from the clutches of the Shepherd may have been traumatized and put through a horrendous ordeal, but none of them had forgotten the homes and families from which they had been taken, their previous lives they sought once again in the vain hope that they might find some comfort in a return to normalcy. For their sakes, both Foyi and Rayf hoped such would be the case, but inwardly doubted any of them, prisoners and rescuers alike, would find the familiarity of the past within reach.

In a positive light, their voyage took them to many planets and locations that Foyi had never before seen, some of which she had only heard of. Tama was almost ecstatic with the prospect of traveling the galaxy on a starship; while this was her second flight, she had spent her first locked in the cargo hold of a slaver's ship, under the heavy influence of drugs inducing deep slumber. She almost spent more time in the cockpit than Rayf did, often staring out at the blue and white whorls of hyperspace, the way the stars elongated into infinite lines of light, only to revert to the distant points representing stars and the invisible systems of planets, moons, planetoids, and debris spread throughout the entirety of the galaxy. Foyi would often try to be in the cockpit when Rayf jumped the Firespray in and out of hyperspace, for it was in these rare moments that the darkness she saw lurking deep in Tama's eyes would dissipate, and she would experience even fleeting moments of true wonder. It was a wonder Foyi shared, and subconsciously, the sisters would reach out to each other in the Force, their essences intermingling the waves exuded by their presences, becoming attuned to each other and sharing the exhilaration they felt upon seeing the galaxy that had been so far removed from their lives on Yanibar.

Rayf had spent a great amount of time interviewing the rescued children, asking them for coordinates and contact information regarding the families they were taken from, and the worlds they called home. After determining the course they would take throughout the disparate locations chosen in the galaxy, Rayf announced that he would be charting a course that more or less followed the Perlemian Trade Route, so they should brace themselves for plenty of interstellar traffic, and potential Imperial patrols. He then placed a restriction on the rescued children regarding premature contact with their loved ones until they came considerably closer to their chosen destinations, for Rayf was considering the bounties he and Foyi may have inspired upon their heads, as well as the Imperial forces they had angered on multiple occasions. He did not want anyone aboard the _Flamusfracta_ to make calls through the Holonet unless absolutely necessary, in case unfriendly ears were listening. Nuri was particularly angered by this proclamation, as they had yet to track down the whereabouts of her father, or even whether he still lived or not. So her rage was fed by her desperation for knowledge regarding the health and wellbeing of her father. It took several moments for Tama to convince her of the caution they must practice in order to not attract undue attention to themselves, and though Nuri did not like it in the least, she finally, begrudgingly, accepted this course of action. Farr was similarly vocal against Rayf's intentions, but he was silenced when Nuri turned her unfocused anger upon him and indefinitely shut him up. Ashla said nothing at all, merely staring off into space again, her emotions so tortured and boiling, it was unlikely even she knew what she was feeling. Yet she quietly provided Rayf the requested information and withdrew into herself once more, offering no verbal opinion on the overall course.

Only later, and in private, did Rayf admit to Foyi that he was more concerned with the kids' families being tipped off too early to their imminent arrivals, and how they might react to the news that the children were still alive. He had no doubts that they would be ecstatic, but he was concerned that they might misinterpret his and Foyi's intentions, both of whom were complete strangers to these families. Rayf did not relish the possibility that they might find scores of law enforcement officials, or even stormtroopers, waiting for them when they tried to return the children to their families, and he did not want to be mistaken for the kidnappers. Foyi agreed wholeheartedly with these sentiments, and spent the rest of the trip attempting to keep the rescued children occupied and healthy. She soon learned that Farr was an expert at dejarik, though it took her almost a dozen rounds to realize she simply did not have the practice or talent for the game that the Rodian did. These attempts at passing the time became more interesting when Rayf showed them all how to play sabacc, save for Nuri, who already knew how to play, and bluffed well enough to amass the largest quantity of dew cakes for which they played instead of credits.

Eventually, they reached their first stop, which for Rayf, Foyi, and Farr was a return to a place previously visited, the grand, sweeping cylinder surrounded by a spoked ring of docking bays and habitation, the imposing yet ostentatious space station known as the Wheel. They wended their way through a morass of starships leaving and entering the controlled space around the installation, which Rayf gained access to by once again calling upon the false persona he had used on their previous visit, that of an adventurous, odd, but ultimately unassuming member of the Tapani House Barnaba. They were granted access to a hangar physically similar to the one they had been allowed to use on their previous visit, though the berth's space was designated Docking Bay 37. While Rayf followed the beacons provided and activated the _Flamusfracta_ 's landing sequence, he allowed Farr to contact his parents, both of whom worked in various capacities with the casinos onboard. After passing through customs, during which Rayf put on the facade of a flighty and eccentric member of foreign nobility, though he did not bother to dress in the obsequious garments he had donned earlier, those aboard the ship simply waited in anticipation. Particularly Farr, who was most anxious to see his parents again, and would not stop jabbering to himself in a mixture of Rodese and Huttese. He was clearly beside himself with the irrational worry that his parents may somehow lose their way through the airflow transit system aboard the space station, even though their careers and lives had been spent almost entirely on the Wheel.

Farr's parents must have dropped whatever they were doing at the time the son they thought lost had contacted them, for barely ten standard minutes after, they appeared at the sealed doors of the docking bay, begging the security personnel to let them in. Instantly suspicious, the members of the Wheel Security Force assigned to the bay tried to dissuade the insistent Rodian couple from approaching the door, until Rayf emerged from beyond it and happily invited them in, explaining to the humans' questioning expressions that they were "distant relations". Foyi found that lie even more ridiculous than the one supposing familial relations between herself and Rayf, but the Matukai Adept merely grinned and replied, "Who says I can't have a little fun with the reputation of House Barnaba?"

Foyi's _lekku_ curled in exasperation. "I'll bet House Barnaba would say so."

"I _am_ of House Barnaba!" Rayf protested, in a voice that was so artificially cultured and melodramatic, Foyi could not stifle her laughter as a result.

But none of the others gathered paid any attention to the exchange, for they had eyes only for the tearful and fervent reunion of Farr and his parents. They held each other in fast and fierce embraces, tears leaking from their bulbous, multifaceted eyes, their hands intertwined as though letting go of each other would cause one, or all of them, to drift apart forever. Farr's parents were dressed in garments of shimmersilk, zeyd-cloth, and other expensive and flashy materials, denoting their stations as employees of establishments catering only to the upper echelons of galactic society. Despite the pro-human bias found almost everywhere the presence of the Empire's New Order was felt, Farr's parents had obviously done well for themselves. Foyi hoped that by asking them to meet on such short notice, they had not abandoned duties that would result in the termination of their stations onboard the Wheel. Though she assumed that if they had, they would have deemed the return of their son worth the cost to their careers and livelihoods.

The Rodian couple were only too willing to show their gratitude to everyone else gathered with ferocious embraces and vigorous clasping of hands. Farr's mother squeezed Rayf so tightly that he began to look uncomfortable. Farr's father clasped her hand with such insistence, Foyi almost suggested he keep it, though she doubted he would have understood her levity, considering he seemed only able to speak Rodese fluently, and a few words of Huttese besides. Farr's mother was similarly unable to communicate fluently, and so their son was put in the awkward position of translating for his parents, who insisted they pay a substantial sum of credits in reward for the rescue and return of their son. Foyi and Rayf had to counter with their own insistence that they needed no reward; that the only reward they required was the one they had already received, being the reunion of Farr with his family. And though his parents continued to urgently try to offer them growing sums of credits, Rayf and Foyi's obstinacy proved relentless, and the Rodian couple finally assented to their refusal. At that point, they were eager to leave, partially motivated by the embarrassment they felt for being unable to reward their son's liberators, but also by their desire to spend as much of the day's remainder with their son. They would most likely spend as much time as they could manage for the foreseeable future with their rescued son. So they chose to leave the docking bay and the exotic ship upon which they had met, but Farr lingered behind long enough to throw his arms around the wispy frame of Tama in an awkward and desperate embrace. Tama went rigid almost immediately, completely shocked by the Rodian's abrupt show of affection. Before she could think of a way to respond, Farr pulled back and met her eyes briefly and sheepishly. "Sorry for being real _sleemo_ ," Farr murmured. "And thank you for not giving up, even when we gave up." The Rodian boy did not await her response and turned to run back down the _Flamusfracta_ 's boarding ramp, joining his parents, and the trio strode hand in hand to the door that would allow them to return to the more populous portions of the space station beyond the interior of Docking Bay 37, and eventually, the home that Farr had been taken from. They left Tama still standing there in a stunned silence. Nuri came to her side and placed a friendly hand on her arm, her attention on the receding backs of the Rodians.

"I thought he didn't like me," Tama murmured in confusion.

"He probably doesn't," Nuri surmised cynically. "But it seems that Farr was finally able to pull his antennae out of his exhaust port long enough to recognize how much he owed you. Who would've thought he had an intelligent thought in that laserbrain of his?"

Tama smirked. "To tell the truth, I'm almost going to miss his complaints and broken Basic. It was kinda...endearing. Sometimes."

Nuri snorted in derision. "I think you're the only one. Good riddance." Tama turned to look at her due to her hard-edged tone, but there was a mirroring smirk on her lips as well.

They left the Wheel shortly thereafter, and Rayf jumped the _Flamusfracta_ to hyperspace, continuing to follow the Perlemian as it curved into the Core of the galaxy, a journey even lengthier than the one that had carried them from Felucia to the space station of gambling and excess. It was during this time that Foyi discovered how boring travel through hyperspace could be, as the majority of those still aboard the vessel spent most of the intervening time trying to sleep. Tama, Nuri, and Ashla were all exhausted, and took advantage of the bunks in the ship's cabins to acquire some semblance of slumber, oft-interrupted by nightmares and post-traumatic flashes. Rayf filled the time by wandering about his ship, taking diagnostics and seeming to commune with the vessel on a supernatural level, all while attempting to look busy. But occasionally, Foyi would wander up to the cockpit to find the man slumped in the pilot's seat in various states of sleep, sometimes merely dozing, other times in a deep, meditative trance, where his presence in the Force had expanded so far from his physical form, it was difficult to sense him as an individual being.

For Foyi, she found respite from her meandering thoughts and lingering fears in practice and training, staying mostly to the cargo hold, where she practiced Force forms and martial techniques to keep herself in shape, and to test the limits on her body prescribed by the many injuries she had suffered that continued to heal. Infrequently, she would descend into meditative trances of her own, allowing the Force to rejuvenate the weariness of her body and speed the healing of her wounds. For those times she could not find the serene center of the choppy waters within her, she continued to practice the Zeison Sha arts she had memorized for years. She felt restless in those moments Tama actually found peaceful sleep, and continually tried to burn the nervous energy from her body through continued exertion.

Thus, Foyi found little actual sleep during the next stage of their journey, though she felt rested and alert enough as they approached their destination, the busy and multicultural world of Brentaal IV, better known simply as Brentaal. The temperate but slightly uncomfortably arid world sat directly on the intersection of the Hydian Way and Perlemian Trade Route, and had thus become the galactic epitome of trade and commerce, an overpopulated and intricately stratified society of billions all focused on the pursuit of trade and accumulating material wealth. They could barely see the brown and ocher world hanging in the darkness of space through the viewports for the sheer number of silhouettes created by innumerable starships and space installations. Despite the vastness of the void, the immediate area surrounding the world was practically cramped with starships of all function and description angling toward the planet's orbit, or escaping its gravitational pull for the farthest reaches of hyperspace. Accompanying these veritable swarms of vessels were decidedly Imperial vessels, from Rendili StarDrive's Customs Corvettes to the imposing wedges of Star Destroyers knifing through the sphere of the world before them like a vibroblade. Clustered in low orbit about the planet were revolving XQ2 Platforms, space stations allowing the enormous swarms of traffic to be shunted through their terminals in an attempt to control the flows of vessels arriving and leaving the planet's space.

Through luck or Rayf's "irresistible charm" heard through the comm channel, he secured a berth at Votrad Independent Downport, the largest and busiest spaceport of the planet, located in the city of Votrad. The Firespray-31 sped over the landscape as it approached the city, the blue air broken by clouds of gray and brown over tumultuous terrain alternating between plateaus, ridges, gorges, and ravines. Most of these lands that were not covered by the world's encompassing megalopoli gave way to vast deserts, baked flats, and even forests of sturdy, resilient trees. Like many of the individual cities that had not bled together into the overall urban regions, Votrad was surrounded by high walls practically bursting at the seams with edifices devoted to both residential and business interests, though most seemed to have been built with the ability to function as either. The sea of buildings were stark in decoration and design, but the construction intimated organic appearances that were surprisingly beautiful in their simplicity.

Rayf brought his ship into a spiraling pattern above the spaceport, following the beacon for the docking facility they had been assigned and similarly avoiding the other starships attempting to land at the Downport. They settled into a bay that had obviously been designed to be a modern and aesthetically-pleasing facility, but it was used far too regularly for the cleaners to maintain that appearance, the floor and walls carbon-scored and scraped by countless sets of landing gear and afterburners. The docking bay's open ceiling allowed the chamber to echo with the roar of starships streaking overhead, afterburners and sublight drives nearly shattering their ears with the vibrations that shivered through the air and made the very floor beneath their feet quiver as they stepped down from the ramp. Rayf and Foyi led the procession, Rayf guiding the quiet form of Ashla with a gentle hand upon her shoulder, while Tama and Nuri followed behind at a meter's worth of distance. They had come to this overpopulated and decidedly Imperial world for the Togruta girl's sake, and yet she had barely emerged from her inner thoughts and the tangled malaise of emotions that continued to keep her trapped in her own interior world. If the thought of returning to her home and loved ones excited her, she did not show it. Foyi grimaced as she looked down at the girl, hoping with her return to her previous life, she might finally begin to find some peace.

They did not have to wait long for the one who had agreed to meet them, a tall, slim Togruta woman in her middle years just beginning to show her age, dressed in conservative and professional garments with corporate logos emblazoned on the uniform. The symbol upon her shoulder depicted a triptych of triangles set within a starburst, and a whispered clarification from Rayf identified it as the corporate logo for Kuat Drive Yards. Once she knew this, Foyi saw the woman in a new light, as a person used to bearing the weight of multiple taxing responsibilities upon her shoulders and doing so with grace and efficiency. The set of her face suggested she was accustomed to affecting neutral expressions and refusing to show emotions, but when her dark eyes fell upon Ashla, her trained facade fell away to an onslaught of joy, fear, relief, and despair simultaneously. She rushed across the intervening space in the docking bay and caught the girl up in her arms, babbling incoherently as she whispered the name of her daughter over and over gain. Ashla merely accepted the embrace at first, practically dangling from her mother's arms, before her own arms came up to clasp her mother's spine and shoulders. The pair of Togruta held each other close as though their lives depended upon their proximity to each other, murmuring in a mixture of Basic and Togruti, assuring the other that they would be alright, that they would survive. Rayf, Foyi, Nuri, and Tama stood at the base of the ramp and watched passively but happily as Ashla and her mother shared private words. The Togruta woman finally pulled her daughter from her breast and held her out at arms' length; her expression nearly descended into abject sadness when she saw how much her daughter had changed in all aspects, how the horrors she had been forced to endure had been etched into her skin almost as palpably as the stripes of her montrals. But she stifled her sobs and turned her gaze above her daughter's head as she looked to the people who had deigned to reunite them. "I don't know who you are," she said in thickly-accented Basic. "And I don't know why you chose to help my Ashla...but I thank you. I must ask _how_ I can express my gratitude...you seek compensation...anything. I can get it for you. I am well-placed with Kuat Drive Yards...I have credits..."

"It's gonna be like this everywhere we go, isn't it?" Foyi whispered an aside to Rayf.

"Not if we run into more Imperials, or Anjiliacs," Rayf answered in a hiss. "They'll offer to shoot us before they pay us."

"The only compensation we wanted was making sure Ashla was safe," Tama answered for the momentarily distracted Rayf and Foyi. "We need nothing more."

The Togruta countered with another offer, but Foyi and Rayf talked her down once more. She turned out far easier to convince that they wanted no reward for rescuing her daughter than Farr's parents had been, which Foyi privately found both a relief and an annoyance. The Togruta woman was eager to take her daughter back home with her, back into the confusing tangle of urbanity that was Votrad, and they left, gripping each others arms close, moments later. Ashla took one look back over her shoulder, never saying another word, and barely managed a hesitant and sad smile, as if the expression gave her physical pain. Foyi and Rayf waved, while Tama and Nuri managed sad smiles of their own. Tama sunk deep into worried contemplations regarding the girl's future for a long time after that. She feared that their shared experiences on Felucia had broken the girl. That Ashla might never be whole again, and that was a sobering possibility.

The last leg of their journey came as a surprise, the destination having not been initially planned, though Tama suspected Rayf had already set their course for the inevitable jump to hyperspace when she heard Nuri let out a shout that was as much an exultation of joy as it was a sob. The Zabrak came sprinting through the Firespray's main corridor and flung herself into Tama's surprised arms, tears flinging from her eyes as she cried, "We found him! He's alive!"

"Your father?" Tama guessed excitedly, wrapping her own arms around the girl's waist.

Nuri pulled back from the Twi'lek so that she could see her face, which she cupped in her hands. "Yes!" she exclaimed, her voice quivering with joy she could no longer contain. "My father's alive! Rayf finally got in contact with him...he's still on Nar Shaddaa!"

Tama felt both anticipation and apprehension at the revelation of their next destination. Most of what she knew regarding the infamous Smugglers' Moon had been related to her by Pash, who had an almost irrational fear of the place, or anything having to do with the Hutt _kajidics._ She knew enough that if they were to land there, they would have to be on their guards at all times, even for a simple meeting to reunite Nuri with her father. If Nuri was concerned with their destination, Tama could not feel it in her presence; after all, it was where she said she had been captured by slavers, though the casual way in which she spoke of the moon suggested it was a familiar, and possibly oft-visited, location.

The journey from the Core Worlds to Hutt Space was long and relatively droll. Rayf continued to fiddle with the various onboard systems of his ship, though it was not long before he began tinkering with the lightsaber he had acquired from the Inquisitor on Felucia. He proceeded to open its casing and study the components inside with a trained eye, keeping special attention upon the synthetic color crystal that gave the blade its foreboding color and appearance. Occasionally, Tama would join him in studying the lightsaber, though she was equally interested in the construction and proficiency of his wan-shen, a weapon she was unfamiliar with and therefore just as fascinating as the legendary laser sword once wielded by the Jedi of old. He was only too happy to explain the construction of both weapons, as well as discussing the utility unique to each blade, the costs of using one over the other. He even let the Twi'lek handle the lightsaber, and put her through a few simple forms to give her a feel for it. Up until this point, most of Tama's training with weapons as extensions of herself and her own abilities with the Force had been focused around ranged weaponry, such as blasters and nonlethal versions of the Zeison Sha discblade. Rayf had not had the time or materials to repair, or even replace, his wan-shen, though he demonstrated some of the melee forms he was capable of using in conjunction with the weapon on lengthy wooden poles he kept for practice purposes. Tama took up one of the poles herself, and found it instinctively more accessible than a discblade. She could feel that her connection to the Force had only grown due to the utter reliance she had placed upon it on Felucia, but she still had difficulty with the intricacies of telekinesis; she was uncertain she had the knack for such precise movements with her mind, unlike her sister. She was not certain she ever would.

She even challenged Rayf to a sparring match to pass the time and to test her affinity for the weapon, taking up one of the wooden staffs and indicating that Rayf should do the same. Rayf complied and invited her to take the first attack, which she did, confident in the strength of her swing and the aim by which it was whirled. But Rayf barely lifted a finger to shatter that confidence, simply deflecting her attack to the side and giving her legs a hard tap that unbalanced her and sent her sprawling. All of this he did within a second or more, moving faster than anyone Tama had ever seen, and before she could even comprehend his counter attack, she was already lying on the deck, gasping, with Rayf standing over her, appearing as calm as he normally did. He gave a short laugh at the bewildered grimace on her face, then reached with the end of his staff to help haul her back to her feet, at which point he offered to show her more, to see if her skills could be improved.

Foyi spent most of the time considering her shredded and broken armor, determining what types of materials she would require to repair and remake it, and whether she would have to fashion an entirely new set of armor. The metal appeared to be salvageable, but she would have to create whole new weaves and an underlay for it, so it was possible she would simply find all the right materials and create a new set. As for her discblade, there was nothing left of her cherished weapon to scavenge, and thus she would have to create one from whatever materials she could get her hands on. She momentarily considered Sho Sura's warehouse back in the shadowport of Point Nadir; it was a place she would likely be able to acquire the metals and wrappings needed to craft her discblade anew. In some ways, having to make the weapon again was an inconvenience, but she felt a deep sense of nostalgia considering the task ahead of her, recalling when she had made her discblade the first time, at the culmination of her Initiate training. Her rite of passage that marked her as a full-fledged Warrior of the Zeison Sha.

Nuri spent the majority of the voyage in various calls on the comlink Rayf lent her, calls to her father, who awaited their arrival impatiently on Nar Shaddaa. Tama was not privy to these personal conversations, but Nuri shared enough with her friend to learn that her father had been injured by the Anjiliac slavers and had had to barter and steal for the medical supplies and bacta to treat his wounds. It was only in the last couple days that he had been fit enough to travel, and had already been making inroads with various contacts and sources he had acquired throughout the black markets and underworld to attempt to locate where the Anjiliac thugs had taken his daughter, busting quite a few heads and leaving more than one "Hutt-lickin' scumbag" in the gutter with blaster burns. His veritable rampage for answers had left him with no small amount of trouble on Nar Shaddaa to contend with, especially with members of the Anjiliac Kajidic there, but he had every intention of waiting until she and her newfound friends arrived, no matter how heated it got for him. This prompted Nuri to query Rayf as to their estimated time of arrival on the Smugglers' Moon almost every hour, but to his credit, the Matukai Adept never allowed himself to become annoyed with her insistence. For her part, Tama attempted to keep Nuri's attention by asking her for stories from her adventurous life before the Shepherd and Felucia. Through nearly a dozen tales Tama was not certain she could wholeheartedly believe, she discovered that Nuri's father was a smuggler and blockade runner who regularly transported goods of various legality through territory controlled by powerful organizations such as Black Sun, the Desilijic Kajidic, the Corporate Sector, and even the Empire. Which was the reason for Nuri having had the opportunities to visit so many disparate systems in the galaxy, as well as her excellent proficiency with blasters. She had led a dangerous existence before the Shepherd's machinations mired her in the depths of his darkness, and Tama found it almost startling to find the Zabrak girl so eager to return to a life that would continually put her in further jeopardy. But she could not deny the allure of a return to whatever had been considered normal for the individual, an allure she felt deep within whenever she considered the harsh world she had called home for her entire life. Whereas Yanibar had once represented her home, as well as a source of consistent annoyance and apprehension due to its unforgiving environment and the necessity of disguising what she truly was, she felt almost nothing regarding the planet anymore whenever her mind dwelt overlong on it. Her life, her existence, as she had once known it had been completely turned upon its head, and somehow, going back to that place, even with the subconscious pull of nostalgia, was not an appealing course of action for her. So Tama tried not to think too deliberately regarding the future, and when she did not feel it necessary to practice and train with the staff she had taken up and the Force she had gained a new viewpoint on, she tried to spend time with her friend, actually dreading their arrival at Nar Shaddaa. For now the Smugglers' Moon represented a fear of encompassing change as much as it did the romance of adventure and excitement; Tama often found herself trembling whenever Nuri spoke of reuniting with her father. The practical side of her realized that Nuri and her father would want to be a family again. The selfish side of her mewled in sadness, begging her to keep her friend close at all times.

So it was with vision tainted by conflicted feelings that Tama stared out through the viewport from behind the pilot's chair at the moon of a sulfurous yellow, brown, and gray, intersected by a patchwork grid of lights denoting the sphere's cancerous urbanity. Nar Shaddaa hung in space like a bloated disc of lurid glows and dark, amorphous shapes that might have been weather systems, but were more likely amalgamations of pollution in the atmosphere as large as continents. Below it, lining the bottom edge of the viewports, was the planet around which the Smugglers' Moon orbited, awash with a similar color palette, though the presence of civilization and large cities were far less prevalent, and more green, gold, and blacks could be seen peering through the tumultuous atmosphere of the planet. Tama had only seen the planet in holos, but she knew enough about Hutt Space from Pash and her own research that she was staring down at Nal Hutta, throneworld of the majority of the Hutt _kajidics_ and the "Glorious Jewel" of Hutt Space.

Unlike their previous stops, their approach to the moon was not challenged by some form of docking administration and security, nor were they asked to log a flight path or directed to certain landing accommodations. Rayf simply angled the _Flamusfracta_ to pierce the polluted and turbulent upper reaches of the moon's atmosphere and spiraled down through the miles of vertical city entangled upon each other. He wove his way through a morass of architecture that might be decaying, rusted, and carbon-scored upon one edifice, only for the next multi-tiered tower to look as though it had been built yesterday, with gleaming surfaces already grimy with unidentifiable scum and myriad lights both neon and holographic casting garish glows through the moon's haze. Tama could not peel her eyes from the spectacle in a sense of morbid fascination, marveling at how an entire world could be subject to so much development and intelligent construction, only for its enormous populace to regard the accomplishments of old with such destructive apathy. She refrained from reaching out to the Force to get a feel for the world, lest she become overwhelmed by the darkness she felt here, the miasma of unnatural desires, anger, greed, lust, hatred, and desperation so tangible they practically created a layer of the atmosphere all their own, all hovering on the verge of her perceptions. She looked to Foyi to see a strained expression on her face, but Rayf's features, while pinched in concentration as he guided the ship, were otherwise passive. Nuri's countenance merely held barely-contained excitement as she looked forward to seeing her father again.

Rayf brought the Firespray-31 replica in a wide arc around a mass of skyscrapers that had been built so close together, they appeared to be leaning on each other, or perhaps a single building with multiple partitions and wings. Around these edifices came into view an immense canyon described by more skyscrapers and stacked multileveled towers of alien architecture, the canyon plunging into depths murky with smog and environmental pollution, crossed by thousands of airspeeders, repulsorcraft, and starships large and small. Rising from the midst of these depths upon a tower of countless lights, like a beacon of light emerging from deepest darkness, was a semi-enclosed courtyard, ringed by thoroughfares and walkways large enough for repulsortrucks to utilize, surrounding a series of smaller, glitzy, edifices denoting businesses and storefronts. The area was illuminated by lights of all description and luminosity, as well as holographic signs and figures. Suspended advertisements in Aurebesh and Huttese characters scrolled by in midair, accompanied by symbols representing various crime syndicates and Hutt Clans, while holographic depictions of trees from across the galaxy lined the outer walkways. The center of the courtyard was a relatively open area frequented by whole crowds of beings hailing from too many species to name, all walking or conversing around a gargantuan statue of tarnished gold depicting a truly impressive Hutt leaning upon a pedestal, an ostentatious hat upon his head.

"That's the Promenade," Nuri exclaimed, gesturing at the series of shops and entertainment venues straddling the top of the tower emerging from the smog. "Where Father wanted us to meet!"

"That's the biggest _karking_ Hutt I've ever seen," Tama added, staring at the statue that was pulling out of view as the _Flamusfracta_ leveled itself with one of the landing platforms along the outer edges of the Promenade.

Foyi gave her a disapproving glance at her choice in language, but both Tama and Nuri ignored her. "It's Karagga the Unyielding," Nuri explained. "Or rather, a likeness of him. He used to be the Supreme Mogul of the Hutt Cartel thousands of years ago, during the Cold War between the Old Republic and the Sith Empire, and was even a military leader for the Cartel's forces during the Galactic War. As you can see, he had too much pride, which is probably the reason he decided to attack both sides with the Cartel's forces, resulting in his death. His statue's remained ever since, though not always in the best conditions. It makes this place pretty easy to find...plus, it's neutral territory for all the _kajidics_ and other criminal organizations, and protected by the Cartel's thugs to make certain it's one of the 'safest' places to shop and relax on all of Nar Shaddaa. Probably why my father chose it for a meeting place."

"Well, I certainly appreciate a 'safe' location," Rayf remarked, flipping a few switches to trigger the landing sequence. "Foyi and I aren't likely to be invited for a friendly cup of caf and match of sabacc by anyone in the Hutt Cartel anytime soon. Especially if they're from the Anjiliac Clan."

"Why's that?" Nuri asked.

"We may or may not have vaped a lot of their henchmen for one," Rayf replied offhandedly.

"And dropped a gravsled on one of the Anjiliac Hutts. Don't forget that," Foyi added.

Nuri and Tama's eyes had grown as large as a whaladon's. "Is that Hutt still...alive?" Nuri asked breathlessly.

Foyi shrugged. "Probably. We didn't try to kill him...just give him a little squeeze."

Rayf queued the landing sequence, and the ship settled upon a landing platform extending from the outer edges of the Promenade. They exited the vessel via the boarding ramp, Nuri practically sprinting down its length in her rush to see her father again, though a hand upon her shoulder from Rayf slowed her considerably, reminding her to remain close to the rest of the group. They began their trek about the exterior thoroughfares of the Promenade, the wind of the upper city bringing a miasma of foul odors and alien aromas to their noses, the unnatural, sulfuric air leaving a slimy moisture upon their skin and a film of grime in their hair and garments. They passed Rodians, Trandoshans, Ishi-Tib, humans, Zeltrons, Ganks, Houks, and Selonians in a blur of movement and furtive hustle, pushing their way through the denser parts of the crowd and not bothering to offer apology. Tama got the impression that looking at almost anyone here wrong, much less speaking to them without consent, would invariably lead to some form of confrontation.

Nuri stayed at the front of the group, not only because of her insistence upon finding her last blood relative, but also because she had been here before, and thus was the only person of their troupe who knew where she was going. Not that their path was difficult to determine; they followed the covered but open-walled balconies of the main thoroughfare, past parked speeders, shuffling and jostling passerby, luxurious skiffs, and docked starships before their path took them to another section of the Promenade, one larger in its width, with multiple levels, monuments, and more holographic imagery. It was here that the Promenade opened fully to the hazy, shrouded air above them, the murky light of the sun filtering through the roiling clouds overtaken by holographic illumination. The expansive square before them featured multiple tiers, all descending to a central area that was dominated by the helmed and gilt statue of the Unyielding Supreme Mogul who had yielded to death long ago. The outer perimeters of the square were lined with shops and business areas for various syndicates and _kajidics_ , as well as extravagant casinos and opulent cantinas. A market frequented by hundreds took up much of the floor space on the far side of the Promenade, featuring stalls and stands for entrepreneurial and specialized goods and services both legitimate and illicit.

Nuri skirted the outer edges of this commercial district, leading them around the Promenade's perimeter until they reached the garish entrance to a cantina, an opening in the outer wall with hovering Aurebesh characters announcing it as the "Slippery Slopes Cantina". Nuri trotted through the open entrance as though she belonged there, ushering them all into an immense room with a ceiling soaring meters above their heads, while four stories of balconies, their edges without railings and lined in purple and blue illumination, ascended up the walls of the main room, looming above the multitudinous tables and plush seating arrayed across the floor. Hanging from the center of the room was a large sphere of light pulsing along to music with a thunderous beat and catchy syncopation, screens depicting advertisements and news gleaned from the HoloNet revolving around the cylindrical terminals in which the sphere was ensconced. Multiple bars offered all manner of drinks gleaned from automixers and a staggering assortment of alcohols, while dejarik and sabacc tables were scattered about the floor for the use of players both professional and casual. They had arrived at a time when the cantina experienced many customers, specimens from dozens of species lounging around tables or at the bars, cradling drinks or plasti-packs of spice, while never letting at least one appendage stray far from a blaster or vibroblade. No one gave close attention to the four travelers as they entered, for they were only one of almost three groups entering or leaving the establishment at the same time.

Rayf, Foyi, and Tama waited as Nuri scanned the crowd, searching for a familiar face. It was Rayf who spotted her father first, as a Zabrak man maybe ten years Rayf's senior suddenly sprang upright from a table, spilling his drink, and pushed past a Nautolan and a Ryn to sprint the intervening space to them. Nuri turned to see the approaching Zabrak man and jumped forward, her focus only upon him as her eyes filled with tears. The Zabrak made no sound but a choked sob as he dropped to his knees and crushed the emaciated frame of his daughter to his chest; Nuri threw her arms about his neck and gave herself over to weeping.

The Zabrak man buried his haggard face in Nuri's shoulder, his hand stroking her ruffled hair. " _Uma ji mun, mah cheekah. Inkabunga! Inkabunga!_ "

"Father..." Nuri whispered in a hoarse voice. "I...I thought you were dead..."

The Zabrak man pushed her back to arms' length, both their eyes leaking tears. "And...I thought you were dead as well...I thought those _sleemos_ had killed my little girl, but here you are, back again, safe and sound." He looked her over, and the sheer joy in his expression was clouded over when he saw the physical state she was in. "Sweets, you need _e'nachu_." His gaze then shifted to take in those who had followed Nuri in, and he stood, never taking his hands fully from his daughter's shoulders. " _Da chuda!_ Come! We'll sit, eat, drink, and make merry, and you can introduce me to all those who brought my little girl back to me from the dead."

They took the man upon his offer, finding a table along the outer edges of the cantina, where the distracting music did not seem to be so dizzying with its undulating volume. The Zabrak man introduced himself as Venec Solad, a self-styled "entrepreneur", to which Nuri happily tacked on the descriptor "smuggler" to better describe him and his line of work. He was tall and thin, almost gaunt in countenance, though Tama was uncertain whether this was due to his recent wounds or simply his physicality. His piercing eyes held a gaze that Nuri had inherited, though his features were more severe and sharp than hers, marred by a pair of scars on his chin and along his left jaw and ear. He possessed a full head of black hair he pulled into a lengthy ponytail at the nape of his neck, save for two long strands he let fall directly before his ears. He dressed himself in a worn jacket of faded gray and blue, with multiple pockets and a high collar, under which was a pale, long-sleeved shirt of heavy, ribbed cloth. He wore a pair of spacers' trousers tucked into old travel boots, kept upon his thin waist by a utility belt laden with pouches and sheathes for vibroblades and a pair of blaster pistols, one of which was a DL-18 Blaster Pistol, the other a DH-23 Outback Blaster Pistol. His look and mannerisms reminded Tama of both Pash and Rayf, and she wondered if people who regularly skirted the law for profit and adventure subconsciously dressed the same way to identify themselves to prospective clients and those "in the know".

Venec treated them all to drinks and small trays of exotic snacks and appetizers Tama could not begin to name, though her stomach gave an appreciative growl as she consumed the sustenance before her. With both enraptured interest and poorly-hidden fear he listened to the tale of the horrid events on Felucia, as related to him by his own daughter and Tama chiefly, while Rayf and Foyi offered information to fill in gaps. The more they spoke, the greater disturbance in the man's emotional state Tama could sense, until he was practically shaking with the onslaught of thoughts and possibilities that might have befallen Nuri. Tama could sense some of these thoughts, and practically view many of them herself, as they were so close to the surface of his consciousness. She empathized with his fear, for she had considered many of the same possibilities. Even though she sat here, relatively safe compared to her situation on Felucia and surrounded by family and friends, she shuddered as she considered all the terrible things that could have befallen her and the others who had managed to escape. This only brought her mind to dwell upon the awful things that _did_ happen to those not fortunate enough to make it out alive, and she sat quietly, picking at her food, unable to bring herself to make anymore conversation, considering she could barely breathe. She felt Foyi's hand on her shoulder, radiating calm and assurance as her fingers brushed her jacket, reminding her that she was safe, that her sister would continue to be with her to protect and support her. Tama showed her appreciation with a subconscious expansion of her presence in the Force and a flick of her _tchun_ , but deep within her core, she was not certain her sister's support was truly comforting.

When Nuri ultimately assured her father that her kidnapper was dead, the nervous energy of the Zabrak man began to dissipate in a rush. He looked into his daughter's eyes, his expression fervent. "You're certain? You _saw_ him dead?"

Nuri's face soured as she recalled the memory of the Shepherd's body in the mud, most of his torso ripped to shreds by laserfire. "He's dead. He's not coming back."

"Good," Venec replied, throwing an arm around his daughter's shoulders and hugging her close. "I'm never letting another _murglak_ get ahold of you, Nuri. I promise."

She patted his arm, smiling with genuine serenity. "I know, Father. And I'm never letting you out of my sight again, either."

"Oh good," he replied mischievously. "I could use my trusty copilot again. Someone to keep an eye on my back, and a good blaster at my side. Speaking of which..." He leaned over to a satchel he had set beside his chair and from its interior produced a weapons belt with slots for power packs and a holster containing a KYD-21 Blaster Pistol, modified for quick draw and a small but steady hand, with a double trigger and a pulse charger enhancement to the chamber. He offered the blaster belt to her, which Nuri took with a careful and loving grip, pulling the pistol from its sheathe and turning the weapon over in a quick inspection. "I saved your blaster. Thought you might like it back when I found you again, _mah cheekah_ , but you found me, so I guess this is my way of making up fro being such a _poodoo_ father."

Nuri's eyes welled with tears as she set the blaster down on the table and threw her arms around Venec. "You're not _poodoo_ , Father. You stayed alive, and you didn't give up. That's all I need."

The group seated at the table continued to speak with each other for hours, relating their stories and getting to know one another. Like the other parents before them, Venec offered Rayf, Foyi, and Tama a reward of some kind, which was insistently refused. Though the Zabrak man did not make the offer again, he did not give up on showing his appreciation, for when he asked for a detailed account of the trail that had led Foyi from Yanibar and Rayf from Nar Shaddaa all the way to Felucia, his interest peaked at the mention of Point Nadir. He intimated that he had never been there physically, but had heard of the infamous and legendary shadowport, and when he heard that Rayf and Foyi still had access to an entire warehouse filled with spare parts, valuable salvage, and all manner of spice, he offered to help them move their goods, even make some profit from it. Rayf and Foyi considered his offer, and determined that it may be what they needed to make something good of all that had occurred in Point Nadir, for their actions there precluded them from returning anytime in the near future. Venec begged to help them with this, if for no other reason than to do something to better their lives, since they had made his complete once more by returning his daughter to him.

"That could work," Rayf agreed at Foyi's nod. "We could meet at a predetermined place and time after you've found buyers with your contacts for the stuff in that warehouse. But on the condition that you dispose of the spice...we're not spice dealers."

Venec's grin turned wicked. "Of course you're not. You're only fugitives from Imperial law and enemies of multiple crime lords. Wouldn't want to add 'spice dealer' to that list of titles, though that's the only one of those things you can claim that would bag you more creds than you'd know what to do with."

"We don't need the credits," Foyi replied, even as she was subconsciously considering the paltry sum left on her credit chip. "Though some of those materials that were in there would be nice to have. Particularly the refined metals."

"It'll be done," Venec replied after taking a sip of his lomin ale.

"As we said," Foyi pressured.

The Zabrak smiled again. "Exactly." Foyi's intense gaze became a glare as she realized he had purposefully made his response vague, instead of giving an affirmation of his agreement.

Nuri stood long enough to gird her blaster about her waist, and she gave a sigh of contentment as she sat down again to Tama's other side. She patted her father's arm, but her gaze was upon the disgruntled Zeison Sha. "Don't worry, Foyi. I'll keep him in line."

Foyi gave Tama a significant glance, but her younger sister merely shrugged. She had no idea whether the pairing was a good thing or not, but she was willing to put a little faith in her friend. They did not remain long after that, as Rayf and Venec discussed possible rendezvous points and comm channels through which they might contact each other. It was becoming apparent that they were all ready to part and go their separate ways, though none of them had any intention of making the planned rendezvous their only future point of contact. Despite this, when Foyi and Rayf stood from the table with every intention of leaving, Tama had to swallow hard to breathe past the mass of emotion rising in her throat. She looked to Nuri, and stood in order to enfold the Zabrak girl in a fierce hug, holding her tight. Nuri returned it and laid her cheek against Tama's shoulder, whispering, "We'll see each other soon, Tama. My father may be a scoundrel, but he takes care of his friends...and so do I. We'll only be a comm call away, and don't _ever_ hesitate to ask for help. I owe you...everything."

Tama pushed her away enough so that she could hold her friend's gaze with her own. She sniffed hard, then forced a smile. "You don't owe me anything, Nuri. You're my friend, and I'd do it all again. I'll only be a comm call away, too, so don't _you_ hesitate if you need anything."

Nuri smiled despondently as Venec put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "May the Force be with you, Tama."

Tama wiped tears from her eyes. "And you, my friend."


	34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Thunder rumbled in the distance, roaring across a sky that had yet to be overtaken by clouds pregnant with moisture, save for a few, nomadic cumulonimbi skittering through the atmosphere. Rishi's primary still shone brightly through the predominantly clear sky, though the impending storm would likely be upon the civilization below its gaze within hours, judging by the stiff, salt-laden wind streaking off the surface of the nearby ocean, almost frigid in its temperament, in spite of the heat of the sun and the humidity suffusing the atmosphere.

Foyi only glanced up in curiosity when she heard the thunder, but she did not slow her stride as she moved through the busy, crowded Bootlegger's Market, a relatively open area of moist boardwalk crowded with stalls and stands tended by sentients representing dozens of species, calling their wares in competing levels of volume. From what little Foyi could actually understand of the various languages being shouted, very few of the products for sale in the market surrounding her would have been legal on Imperial-controlled worlds, but this far in the Outer Rim Territories, deep within the snarled hyperspace lanes of the Rishi Maze, the Empire had next to no presence here. Which was how the many inhabitants of the grimy, haphazard, and treacherous city of Raider's Cove preferred it, as the city, built from flotsam and salvage, permacrete and durasteel edifices rising from unstable wooden platforms suspended along the coast of Horizon Island, was a haven for spacers, pirates, scoundrels, and adventurers from all over the galaxy. Beings from all walks of life and with varying degrees of involvement in the underworld of the galaxy passed her by, going about their own business, some inebriated or high on spice, others traveling in tight groups with hands on blasters, slugthrowers, and vibroblades. The city had an ancient feel to it, having been built by shipwrecked pirates thousands of years before, the erosive signs of time evident in the level of decay apparent in the wooden supports upon which the majority of the city was constructed in order to keep the predominance of the homes and businesses above water when the tides rose. The sheer variety and inconsistency in building materials, aesthetics, and architecture bespoke of multiple cultures over the millennia having been involved in its construction, and there did not seem to be any sort of central planning or overall direction in layout, leaving visitors to navigate the various neighborhoods by memory or proffered direction alone. Foyi was reliant upon her memory, for she had already been here over a week, and had spent many an hour already wandering Raider's Cove, familiarizing herself with her environs while taking in all the unique and unusual sights they had to offer.

She kept her gait relaxed and casual as she traversed the rotting boardwalk providing the floor for the market, trying to ignore the sounds of creaking and swaying prompted by her feet as she walked across some of the weaker boards. She was careful to keep her gaze constantly moving, not wishing to attract the attention of any of the hostile members of the crowd moving about her. She recognized far too many elements of criminal syndicates either striding past or lurking in alleys and the shadows cast by market stalls or leaning edifices of wood and mildewed duracrete. She gave a group of human men a wide berth, their garments covered in armor cobbled together from a menagerie of sources, their hairstyles, predominant scars, and equipment belts laden with blasters, blades, and grenades suggesting they were pirates or mercenaries. They trailed behind a severe and powerfully-built human man with bulging musculature, a wide face, a sharp nose, and dark eyes of malice and cruelty. Foyi's gaze merely fell upon him for an instant, though it was enough to note the black outfit he wore that left his arms and legs predominantly bare, the wild shock of red hair atop his head, not to mention the prodigious beard of the same crimson covering his chin. He gave her a passing glance as he and his subordinates walked in the opposite direction, but it was enough for him to favor her with a sneer of contempt. She paid him no heed and continued onward, striding past a pair of Zygerrians with Anjiliac tattoos on their necks, who were openly sizing her up as though she were a nerf steak. The part of her that was always paranoid, always hostile, no matter how safe she otherwise felt, urged them to try and accost her, if for no other reason than for her to try out the weapon hidden in its holster upon her back on live targets. But Foyi continued walking, past a stand where a Lethan Twi'lek male bartered over alien foodstuffs with a pair of Rishii and a Weequay adherent of the H'kig religion. They bantered in no less than three languages, the individuals of the group barely able to understand each other as they argued over each misunderstood word and offer.

Foyi drew the scarf she had tucked about her throat a little closer to her chin, her _lekku_ wriggling slightly against the cloth as they draped behind her shoulders. She wore a hooded jacket similar to the one she had worn on Felucia, though that article of clothing had long since been tossed away, due to all the tears and stains created by both mud and blood it had sustained. Her legs were clad in cargo pants with multiple pockets along the sides, and beneath her jacket was a white shirt with a low, open collar, a style favored by many spacers. She had girded herself with a bandolier across her chest containing multiple pockets for power packs, rations, and other small devices, while her utility belt contained further pouches, as well as a holster that rode low on her right hip, housing a Model 434 "DeathHammer" Heavy Blaster Pistol. Over her left shoulder she had tossed the strap of a satchel, in which she kept various foodstuffs and hygienic supplies to replace those that she had already used on the journey that had found her here on the outskirts of the galaxy. But the weapon she was most aware of was the one hidden within its sheathe beneath her jacket, riding near the center of her back, that she might reach back behind her neck or under her jacket to seize it and bring it to bear. Not that she actually needed to physically grab it from beneath her garment to wield it, for the replacement for her lost discblade was as attuned to her as her previous weapon had been, and she could call it telekinetically to her hand almost instantaneously. The confident set of her stride was partially due to the fact that she possessed the traditional weapon of the Zeison Sha once more, having constructed it from various materials she had received from Rayf, or found in junkyards and salvage heaps across all the many locations they had visited thus far. Its presence was like a calm, steady ripple against her consciousness, a quiet assurance that she held an intrinsic part of what she considered to be her identity again. She had previously realized that she, as an individual, was far more than the armaments and accoutrements she might possess, but she could not deny the irrational feeling of comfort that came with the replacement of her Force tradition's signature weapon.

Foyi set for herself a meandering course that took her close enough to many individual stalls, that she might take in with a glance the wares they offered, but not so close that the merchants might immediately pester her for a sale. The zigzagging course she walked would eventually lead her back to the outskirts of town, and partially-overgrown landing platforms on the edges of Horizon Island's jungles, what served as a sort of spaceport for Raider's Cove. Traders, spacers, and visitors walked around or shoved directly past her, as she was walking against the general flow of traffic, which reminded her to keep her supernatural senses close to her body and the equipment she carried, lest one of these passerby prove to be a pickpocket.

On the farthest edge of Bootlegger's Market, Foyi's attention on her external environment wavered as she thought ahead, imagining the path she must take to get back to the landing platforms and the ship that had been her home for slightly over a month now. But even as her focus turned inward, her eye caught upon a market stall that was little more than a lean-to of wood lashed together with crude, woven ropes and vines, thick leaves taken from jungle trees dangling over the lip of the roof. Sitting beneath this shelter, utilizing the shade produced by the slanted roof, was a small member of the Rishii species, avian humanoids capable of flight, due to their light frames and the feathered wings upon arms that ended in triple-digit hands. His wide, brown-feathered face sported a large beak almost in the center of his face, flanked by piercing yellow eyes. The Rishii sat cross-legged beneath the overhang of his market stall, his lengthy tail curled around his four-toed feet. He sat in a patient, contemplative silence, his gaze sliding upward to meet her own, even as she looked down at the strange collection of objects he had arrayed before him, assuming they were valuable commodities. One was a comlink old enough it might have hailed from before the Clone Wars, and remained in dubious shape and functionality. Another was several, unrefined chunks of brown stone streaked with teal and aqua-colored minerals, specimens of the local fossil fuel exonium. Beside these was a bundle of feathers in a full spectrum's worth of colors, arranged in a sort of bouquet or perhaps a fashion accoutrement meant to be worn on the arm or about the neck. Next were a trio of thin, hand crafted slings with accompanying stones for bullets, the traditional weapons used by the predominantly primitive Rishii; Foyi had heard rumors of the Rishii, despite their accepting and placid nature, possessing deadly accuracy with such weapons, especially when flying above their intended target. But it was the final item that truly drew her interest, a formation of roughly-hewn crystal smaller than the palm of her hand, its exterior a cloudy shade of green made dark by the suggestion of blackness within its facets.

Foyi dropped into a squat before the merchant, staring at the crystal laid out upon the blanket between them. An idea occurred to her as she stared at it, then brought her gaze upward to meet the regard of the Rishii, who patiently stared back, cocking his head to the side with a quizzical sense to his presence. "What is this?" Foyi asked, stabbing an index finger at the crystal.

The merchant reached out with delicate fingers and held the crystal up to the light, further encapsulating the dark heart of the formation that leaked into the green coloration about its contours. "Color crystal. For Jedi. Very old."

"And valuable?" Foyi finished with a suspicious glance.

"Not anymore," the Rishii replied in a tone Foyi believed to be his species' equivalence of nonchalance. "Not since Empire. Curiosity, now."

Foyi kept her expression neutral as she shifted her gaze to the passive regard of the Rishii. "How much do you want for it?"

The Rishii curled his fist about the crystal, the soft glow of the light reflecting off its facets disappearing as his palm enclosed it. "Why you want?"

"I have a friend...a friend who collects 'curiosities', and I think he might like it. Does it matter? I have credits."

The Rishii's right wing came up in a dismissive wave, momentarily buffeting Foyi's face with a wash of moist air. "Do not want credits. Trade."

"For what?"

The Rishii reached forward, his dexterous, gentle fingers running along the contours of the pouches on her bandolier. Foyi flinched away slightly, but then touched the bandolier herself, her gaze quizzical. "This? You want my bandolier?"

The Rishii's other hand opened, revealing the crystal housed within. "Ban-do-leer for shiny stone. Trade? Good trade."

Foyi smiled and pulled the leather belt from her shoulder and over her head, folding it over once and placing it on the blanket at the Rishii's feet. The Rishii's head bobbed in appreciation, and he gently laid the crystal at the tips of her mud-caked boots, where she squatted. They each picked up their traded prizes and took a moment to gaze at them, the Rishii immediately rifling through the pockets of the bandolier to find small ration packs and blaster cartridges, while Foyi turned the crystal over in her hands, her fingers sliding over the smooth edges and uneven facets. She grinned and tucked the crystal into a pouch at her belt, patting the pouch closed and standing upright. "Thank you," she told the Rishii as she readjusted the strap of her satchel upon her shoulder.

The merchant bobbed his head, slinging the bandolier across his own chest. "Your friend like curiosity. Yes?"

Foyi nodded. "He's a curiosity himself, so I'm certain he will."

* * *

The paths wandering outside of Raider's Cove cut through the mud and the thick jungles surrounding the grimy city of scoundrels, ne'er-do-wells, and villains, dense tropical and deciduous trees in so many shades of green, they made her eyes hurt to look upon them too long. She had wandered the city during bouts of listlessness for days since her visit to Bootlegger's Market and the curious Rishi with the crystal that had caught her eye, having nothing urgent to attend to for what felt like the first time in her recent memory. She had taken in many of the sights and sounds the city had to offer, avoiding those who looked as though they might pose a problem for her if she were to engage them, though it was the Rishii and the H'kig who were typically those willing to engage in conversation should she so desire it. Beyond the city's outer limits, which were difficult to determine due to the way individual constructions tended to spill out every which way from the older buildings and crumbling northern wall, the rest of Horizon Island stretched beyond her view, the terrain of varying elevations rising into ridges and mountains amongst valleys and swamps. Foyi occasionally ventured beyond those limits, into the forest named the Western Jungle Expanse by locals, to meander about the trees, studying the native flora and fauna and letting herself absorb the scenery, letting her connection to the Force spiritually inform her of the unique presences of unfamiliar animals and predators slinking through the underbrush. The expanse of vegetation was dense, despite the hilly, rock-laden soil in which the drooping palm trees loomed above her, dripping with rainstorms that had swept across the island on multiple occasions in the last few days, sometimes more than once a day. Unlike the claustrophobic and sinister sensations she had felt within the otherworldly but dark beauty of Felucia, the Western Jungle Expanse held only serenity for her, a communion with nature and the other creatures around her, rarely seen but always felt as the origins of light, calming ripples radiating out from their presences, teasing the surface of the infinitesimal depths of the Force by their existence alone. Her solitary walks also gave her time to think, to consider what the future held for her, her sister, and her friend. She knew not where she might find herself in that future, or what she would be doing in it, and this notion both excited and frightened her. Foyi had yet to fully emerge from the haze that had settled upon her mind since finding Tama again, as though her consciousness were trying to convince herself that she was walking through a dreamscape, as though none of what she had experienced since was real. She had no ultimate goal or direction in her life now; previously, being a Zeison Sha Warrior, training her sister in the traditions she had learned, and simply surviving from day to day had been enough to set direction and purpose for her existence. But Tama was safe, if not entirely well, and nothing on Rishi had yet arisen to actively threaten their lives. She had continued to impart her knowledge of the Force and Zeison Sha techniques to Tama, but her sister had been less than receptive. She was more dutiful, more focused on her training than ever before, but her interest in expanding and developing her abilities and her newly-strengthened connection to the Force were more in tune with Rayf's capabilities than Foyi's. Indeed, Tama had asked Rayf to show her more of the ways of the Matukai, as well as help her to better understand the unique philosophy of that tradition, the strive for perfect balance within oneself and the Force. Foyi had tried to hide her disappointment in both herself and her sister, that Tama seemed to no longer be interested in the teachings Foyi had tried to impart to her for years now. That Foyi had failed to not only protect her sister, but provide the instruction in the Force she required. But if Rayf was in a better position to help Tama continue on her path of discovery of herself and the Force, she could think of no better teacher.

Foyi stumbled on a stone jutting out from the overgrown path of mud and fallen branches, nearly throwing her from her feet and eliciting a vile curse that pulled her from her deep contemplations. She hopped past the stone, then looked ahead to see the moldering series of landing platforms through the hanging leaves of the palm trees, the permacrete pads and surfaces built upon wooden planks and supports near the coastline laden with starships belonging to mercenaries, bounty hunters, and spacers from all across the galaxy. All willing to brave the turbulent Rishi Maze to find a port of sanctuary from the law, from the Empire, or even from their own personal struggles and demons.

Foyi gave the unknown starships and the droids bustling about, lifting and offloading cargo crates and cylinders, a wide berth as she followed the thin path about the perimeter of the unofficial spaceport, where it carved its way deeper into the jungle. She walked for half a kilometer, far enough that the other ships soon became obscured by the foliage and the shadows beneath the canopies. The path opened into a clearing, only one of many landing fields scattered along the coast, the natural barrier of the jungle providing the current occupants a small measure of privacy. In this clearing, resting in thick tangles of grass and soft mud, was the _Flamusfracta_ , where it had remained for a couple weeks now. Moisture had collected across its pitted and carbon scored hull plating, and fallen leaves rested atop the upper portion of the ship, which would have been its forward section if it were in its flight configuration. The landing ramp was down and open, and near it, by the edge of the jungle, were the two companions with whom she had been traveling with, with whom she felt she belonged, no matter her own uncertainties and misgivings regarding her place in the universe.

Rayf was farthest from her, clothed in a short-sleeved shirt with a low, open collar and loose-fitting pants that allowed him a wider range of movement and changes in stance. He had shaved his head recently, finally parting with the hair that had been leaving his scalp anyway, and had allowed the hair on his chin to become a short, neatly-groomed beard along his jawline. He held an unadorned wooden staff in both hands, keeping it in a relaxed, defensive posture as he slowly circled his opponent. His gaze was intense and determined, focused but not pained, and he showed no signs of weakness or exertion, save for the small stains just beneath his armpits. He faced Tama, who still looked so small and frail that a single tap from Rayf's quarterstaff might snap her in half, but the Force was rippling out from her and toward her as she drew on it in a controlled and powerful motion. She was clothed in similar pants and a light tunic that she had borrowed from Foyi, which looked almost two sizes too large for her, hanging from her like a dangling flag, though the material at her back stuck close to her spine as a result of the sweat that rolled off her body. She was breathing heavily, her _lekku_ twitching in anticipation and agitation. She held a similar quarterstaff, though it was above her head in an aggressive stance, slowly revolving above her as she analyzed Rayf's posture with both her eyes and the Force, searching for an opening, attempting to determine what moves he would make to counter her own and how she might respond.

As Foyi approached, Rayf glanced to the side to offer the Twi'lek a smile in greeting, at which point Tama took her opportunity and pounced, bringing the quarterstaff down at him in a vicious, two-handed blow meant to impact Rayf's head and neck. Rayf's gaze instantly shifted back to Tama as his body dodged to the left, throwing the Twi'lek off-balance, her weapon only striking air. Rayf, now flanking Tama, whirled his quarterstaff about his waist to take out her legs in a single sweep, but Tama had already recovered from her missed swing and called upon the Force to leap vertically in the air. As she was airborne, her right foot snapped toward Rayf's chin, forcing him to arc his back to bring his head away from the blow. Tama landed and immediately tucked into a roll across the grass to escape Rayf's series of three slashes and a stab that slammed the end of his quarterstaff into the ground where she had been milliseconds before. Tama whirled about to face him again, in time for Rayf to lever his staff out of the mud with such speed as to fling a clod of that mud at Tama's face. Instinctively, her palm flew up to her face and erupted with telekinetic energy, flinging the droplets of mud away from her. Rayf followed that with a series of short, precise sweeps of the staff, and wood rang out with hollow-sounding _clunks_ and splintering sounds as Tama blocked or redirected every single blow with her own staff. Rayf was relentless, pressing the assault, his movements starting to blur as he picked up speed. Tama frantically backpedaled, unable to mount any retaliatory attacks as she was forced merely to block Rayf's, the staff nearly vibrating from her hands with the force Rayf applied behind each strike. She was panting now, her legs quivering and her feet slipping in the mud as she shifted her stance constantly, but Rayf refused to relent or give her a moment to reassess her position, pushing her further and further until her heels struck a fallen branch. Tama gave a shout of surprise as she tumbled backward, losing her balance completely and landing in a heap in the underbrush of the jungle surrounding the clearing. She flailed and scrambled to get back to her feet, only to lift her head in time to find the end of Rayf's staff hovering just beneath her chin. She gave a resigned sigh and tossed her staff to the side, conceding the duel. Rayf spun his staff away from her, putting it in a ready, backhanded grip, then reaching with his free hand to help the Twi'lek girl to her feet. "Remember, Tama, your environment is as much a part of you as you are of it. All is one in the Force, and when you are properly balanced, your body and your environment become integral parts of the whole. If you remain balanced, you remain aware, and if you remain aware, you will never lose your balance."

Tama squatted to pick up her staff and leaned upon it, trying to still her breathing. "Is there some sort of unwritten rule that Force-sensitive mentors and teachers have to be so _kriffing_ cryptic when it comes to imparting their knowledge?"

Rayf chuckled. "There's actually a handbook we all ascribe to. You can find it on the HoloNet and download it to your datapad."

"What's it called? 'How to Teach Your Student and Drive Them Crazy At the Same Time'?"

"Acutally, 'How to Sound Like You Know Everything When You Don't Understand What You're Saying'. It was the Jedi Council's favorite reference text beside the Jedi Code...drove the entire Republic crazy, too."

"Look how well that turned out for them."

Rayf nodded solemnly. "Can't argue with that. Look, Tama, all I'm trying to tell you is to remain in constant contact and reliance upon the Force. To reach for it, but to let it reach for you as well. You feel the Force and you want to control it, want it to answer your will and your whims, but you have to recognize your place in it. You have to answer to its whims and will, let it carry you along in its flow. We are all alive and united in the Force, and the Force is in everything and everywhere you look. Let your body be the focus, the vessel in which the Force is found, working through you, and your footing will remain sure, your insight pure and true. Let go of yourself, and sooner than you think, you'll be able to knock meon _my_ ass."

Tama nodded, giving him a distant smile. "I'll look forward to that day."

Rayf slapped her shoulder in a gesture of camaraderie and encouragement, then turned to Foyi, striking a dashing pose with his staff. "Cousin! You finished wandering about?"

"I wasn't wandering," Foyi replied irritably. "I was walking. And don't call me 'cousin'."

"Whatever you say, cousin."

Foyi approached Tama, laying a cautious palm along her sweaty cheek. "I saw you practicing. You've improved in almost every aspect so quickly; I could feel you in the Force, your power, your focus, and the peace with which you direct your efforts."

Tama smiled, but it was a hollow expression. She glanced at Rayf, who was retrieving his jacket and equipment belt from where he had hung them on a ragged stump at the edge of the clearing. "Despite appearances, Rayf is a great teacher. I'm learning a lot from him." Her eyes widened as a thought occurred to her. "I'm not saying that you're a _bad_ teacher, or that I haven't learned anything from you. I'm just saying..."

Foyi raised a hand to still her worries. "It's okay, Tamam'buma. I understand. You've grown in the Force since Felucia, and if this is the best way to explore and develop your potential, then this is what you need to do. Even if it means enduring Rayf for hours at a time."

"You girls realize I'm still standing right here, you know," Rayf interjected as he maneuvered his arms into his jacket.

"I doubt you'd ever let us forget it," Foyi quipped.

Rayf grinned rakishly and shrugged. "What can I say? I'm indispensable."

"Oh?"

Rayf made a show of looking around, as though he were searching for another being not present. "I'm not seeing any other pilots around here...are you?"

Foyi crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not such a bad pilot."

"You're not such a bad _copilot_. It'll be awhile before you can be considered the fighter jockey you seem to think you are."

Tama giggled, and Foyi could not quite keep a straight face as she replied in mock annoyance, "Says who?"

"Says your pilot. Also, captain and owner of the ship you fly around in free of charge."

"Speaking of flying," Foyi remarked, redirecting the conversation as she looked at Tama. "Have you heard from Venec or Nuri?"

The tips of Tama's _lekku_ curled upward in agreement. "Nuri said they should be on Rishi in a day or two. They had to make a detour around Bothan Space, as well as being slowed down by more than one 'Imperial entanglements'. But they're okay now, and on their way."

Rayf nodded, shifting his staff from one hand to the other. "Good. Then we'll have some more creds to work with...which would be nice, considering we're all running low, and my baby could use some more fuel before we lift off." He snapped his fingers as something jogged his memory, and turned excitedly to face Foyi. "Hey, Foyi, I just remembered...there's something I wanna show you. Something I've been working on for a few days." Without another word, he turned and trotted up the Firespray's boarding ramp, disappearing through the open hatch and into the ship's interior.

Foyi gave Tama a bemused gaze. "Are you coming too?"

Tama shook her head, spinning her staff slowly about her wrist. "I'm fine. I think I know what he wants to show you, and if I'm right, I've already seen it. Go ahead; I'll just be out here, practicing."

Foyi looked to the ship, then back at her sister indecisively. "You're sure you're fine?"

Tama nodded more insistently as she turned away, moving off to give herself plenty of room to swing her staff. "I'm sure. I'll be out here if you need me."

"Okay," Foyi replied softly. She could feel the melancholy sensation descending upon her sister, the mournful eddies that rippled from her consciousness, even as the core of her presence hid beneath the waves, shutting out her sister's concerns. Ever since rescuing her from Felucia and the clutches of the Shepherd, Tama had become more withdrawn, quiet, unwilling to let anyone get too close to estimating exactly what she was feeling at any given moment. Foyi had known that if she had been successful in rescuing her sister, Tama would not be the same person she had known before she was kidnapped; no one survived the terrors she did and went back to life like nothing had happened. But Foyi had not prepared herself for the sheer helplessness she felt whenever she tried to get her sister to open up to her. Whenever she tried to convince her that everything was going to be alright, that she was safe, and Tama could count on her for as long as either one of them lived. Foyi lingered for a moment, biting her lower lip as Tama began putting her body and her staff through several deliberate and precise maneuvers, practicing martial forms that were occasionally punctuated by minor Force pushes, pulls, and telekinetic gestures.

Dejectedly, Foyi turned and strode up the ramp, to find Rayf waiting for her, learning just inside the hatch so that he could have a clear view of what was occurring outside. Foyi moved to the opposite side of the hatch and similarly peered out, watching Tama as she fought imaginary enemies, her eyes closed most of the time, her movements alternating quick and slow. Foyi turned to Rayf, her mouth set in a thin line of worry. "I'm worried about her, Rayf. She's not coping well. I don't know how to reach her...I'm here for her, but she keeps pushing me away, and I'm not sure she even realizes she's doing it. Or maybe she does, and thinks she has to face whatever she's feeling alone."

Rayf nodded sadly. "I've seen this before; _felt_ it before. It's survivor's guilt, I think. She probably keeps thinking about all the other kids who didn't make it, and wonders why she was lucky enough to escape. The fact that she's Force-sensitive doesn't help matters either, because now she's putting a greater responsibility on her shoulders for those who died. I believe she feels that if she had only been stronger, had only practiced more, or knew more about the Force, she could done more for the other kids. More could have survived. It's why she practices so hard, why she's so eager to learn. She wants to expand her Force powers; she wants to become powerful enough to make certain she is never at the mercy of a madman again, and if she is, she wants to be strong enough to fight back, to save herself and others." He sighed and shifted his weight upon his opposite foot. "All we can do Foyi is be here for her. Guide her, comfort her, and learn to step back when we need to. It hasn't even been two months since Felucia...she needs time, and we need to give her all the time she could possibly need. We must be patient, we must be supportive, and we must be cautious. Despair, grief, and a loss of confidence are often more insidious than the Dark Side, and she is at risk of succumbing to all those right now."

Foyi nodded. She could feel the rising pain of emotion in her chest as she watched her sister pass through a dazzling display of kicks, twirls, and slashes that ended in a powerful stab, before she brought her staff back to a vertical guard before her, her body perfectly poised. "I'll be here for her," Foyi replied in barely more than a whisper. "Whatever she needs...however long...whatever it takes. She'll get better." She reluctantly peeled her gaze from her sister, then looked to Rayf again. "Now, what did ya want to show me?"

Rayf startled, then grinned. "Oh yeah!" He picked up a parcel which he had leaned against the wall beside him, and undid the clasps to reveal the silvery-white hilt of the lightsaber that had once belonged to Inquisitor Vinaq. He dropped the pouch and offered the grip of the lightsaber to her, his grin practically radiant. "Switch it on."

Foyi took the proffered weapon and backed away slightly so that she might have plenty of room to activate the dangerous blade. The blade sprang into existence with a _snap-hiss_ , but instead of suffusing the corridor with the scarlet glow she expected, a wash of forest green bathed the metal surfaces, surrounding a core of deepest night. She waved the blade back and forth, the darkness of its core and the green of its ambient illumination creating strange competing glows of emerald and shadow. Foyi stared into the blade in fascination. "I thought...I thought the blade was always white..."

"This is an ancient color crystal," Rayf explained. "I don't know how old, but definitely thousands of years. I read stories in the Jedi Archives about Jedi and Sith alike wielding sabers with dark blades during the Galactic War, and so I'm assuming the color crystal you gave me is from that time period. I've spent the better part of the week extracting the old synthetic crystal from the hilt and attuning and reshaping this one until it worked properly. I wanted you to see it, since you made this possible." He reached forward and gripped her wrist gently. "Thanks by the way. I really appreciate it."

She switched the weapon off and handed it back to him, letting her hand brush his for a moment longer than necessary as she did so. "I thought you might like it. Though I wonder what you intend to do with it, now that that lightsaber is more to your...tastes."

He rolled the hilt about in his hands, studying it with a loving and longing gaze. "Well, I'm definitely keeping it around. Not everyone's forgotten the Jedi completely, no matter how much Palpatine wishes that were so. Could be useful, from time to time, in all kinds of situations."

"Could make us a target," Foyi replied grimly.

Rayf shrugged. "We're already a target. Yuelo will wear our faces for hats if he ever catches wind of us again, and by now, Vinaq's likely told the entire Inquisitorius about us. No matter where we go, we're going to have to be careful. Check our rear scopes all the time. Having _this_ changes none of that, but it might help us when we encounter those still sympathetic to Force-users, who remember what the Jedi were and what they were meant to be. Plus, I like the idea of having a lightsaber attuned to me, even if I never got the opportunity to build one of my own." He hooked the lightsaber to his belt, not caring that it was displayed so openly when in the privacy of his ship, and amongst friends.

Rayf and Foyi stood in the corridor for a moment, staring out at Tama again as an awkward silence settled between them. Foyi broke it by clearing her throat and announcing her desire for some caf, which Rayf echoed. The pair walked back to the ship's lounge and set about brewing the hot, stimulating drink, filling the small space with its pleasant aroma. They sat beside each other on the crash couch, both gripping a heated mug between their palms and sipping at their contents quietly.

Foyi found herself staring down at the empty dejarik table for several, lengthy moments, her thoughts racing about her head at lightspeed, her emotions a sea of churning, frothy waves. "What do we do after this, Rayf?"

Rayf gave her a quizzical glance. "After we drink our caf? We...um...we drink more caf!"

Foyi shook her head with a chuckle. "I mean, what happens next? Where do we go? What do we do? Who are we now? All my life, I have moved from short-term goal to short-term goal, simply trying to survive Yanibar's storms and predators, trying to keep away from the Empire, trying to be sister, mother, and mentor to Tama. And now...I don't know what to do. I can't go back to Yanibar...at least, not to the town I came from. I caused too many problems with the Imperial garrison back there, and there're too many people who know Tama and I, too many...memories. Things I did I'm not proud of. Things the Empire did to the Zeison Sha." She trailed off, having nothing more to say, and somehow finding that disheartening.

Rayf stared into his mug and nervously cleared his throat. "Well, Foyi...I've been thinking on taking on a small crew. I've always been able to make by on my own so far, but you know, it doesn't hurt to have some backup. I mean, I could use a decent copilot, and someone I can actually tell my lame jokes and spacers' tales to. And some of the jobs I take on...well, they get difficult with just one set of hands, and Force knows I could always use the credits. Joyriding through hyperspace and keeping an extremely rare ship in one piece ain't cheap, you know."

Foyi felt her heart skip a beat as excitement and uncertainty flooded her consciousness. "Are you...asking us to come with you?"

Rayf gave her a hopeful grin, though she could feel uncertainty rolling off of him like surf from a beach. "Family...should stay together. Right, cousin?"

"We're not cousins," Foyi replied automatically. She turned away from him, considering the offer, considering her potential future, traveling all about the galaxy with this man and her sister. A trio of Force-users in a galaxy bent on destroying them or corrupting them. Perhaps, together, they might have a chance at a life free of fear and tyranny, a life they might never know by themselves. Her _tchun_ tucked itself about her throat in contemplation. "But...what would we do?"

"What does anyone else in this galaxy do?" Rayf asked.

Foyi blinked. "They _live_."

Rayf nodded. "We live. We make our own way in the universe. We follow the Force, let it guide us, and maybe, maybe it leads us to someone who needs our help. Someone only _we_ can help. Like when it guided me to you." He turned to her, setting his caf on the dejarik table, then gripped her right hand with both of his. "We live together because none of it's worth a cargo hold of Hutt drool if we live alone."

Foyi grimaced around her smile. "Thanks for the mental image." She considered his hands gripped around hers, then set her own caf down and placed her free hand atop his. She could feel strength, urgency, and unity in that contact. The same serenity he always exuded was there, but so too was anticipation, excitement, and apprehension. He had meant every word he had just said with every fiber of his being, and his hope that she might accept was a palpable wave roaring against her consciousness. She met his eyes and let a wide smile reach her face as she subconsciously communicated her affirmation, never being more certain of a decision in her entire life. "We have to ask Tama what she wants to do. I won't make a decision for her."

"I like the idea," came Tama's voice, causing both of them to jump. She had stepped through the hatch into the lounge, her tunic and pants drenched in sweat, her gait weak and uncertain as she crossed the floor. But her intense gaze held the barest hint of light within the depths of her eyes, the sense of wonder, the longing for adventure indicative of the girl she had once been rising from the morass of dark emotions that seemed to plague her. For that briefest of moments, Tama, the girl she had known and loved all her life, emerged from the shroud she hid herself behind, and Foyi knew then that this course of action presented them was the right thing to do.

"Then we stick together?" Rayf asked hopefully.

Foyi and Tama nodded simultaneously as Tama took a seat at the dejarik table. "We live," Foyi intoned.

Tama cleared her throat, the ghost of a smile quirking the corners of her mouth. "We go where the Force guides us." She eyed the cups of caf sitting on the table, then gave Rayf an expectant regard. "So, what do I have to do to get a cup of that?"

"Pour it yourself," Foyi replied mischievously. Tama reached for the carafe, but Foyi raised a finger. "With the Force."

Tama gave her an obstinate stare and crossed her arms. The air rippled and groaned about the table, and the carafe suddenly rose into the air, hovering with a minor wobble as it floated over to an empty mug, then tipped itself enough to pour a generous quantity of the liquid. The carafe set itself down, and the newly-filled mug skirted across the table to Tama's waiting hand, which she used to bring it to her lips and drink heartily of the scalding liquid. During this entire sequence of events, Tama's stubborn gaze never removed itself from Foyi's, and Foyi could not help but let out a laugh. Rayf joined with his own chuckles as Tama made a squeak of discomfort as she realized her obstinacy had gotten the better of her and prompted her to swallow hard to get the boiling caf out of her mouth. Once she could speak again, she uttered a curse that instantly made Foyi glare at her, though Rayf only laughed all the harder. Tama simply treated her sister to a smile that was almost radiant, and was so familiar.

Though Foyi glared at her impertinent sister, inwardly, she thought she might burst with joy. Her sister would be alright. She had found a friend whom she could count on for anything, who consistently made her life interesting. And she had found a purpose, one she could share with the two people she cared about the most in the galaxy.

The Force was with them. And it was good.


End file.
